THE  LIBRARY 

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NATION 
BUILDERS 

A  Story 


By 
EDGAR  MAYHEW  BACON 

Member  of  the  American  Historical  Association 
AND  (THE  LATE) 

ANDREW  CARPENTER  WHEELER 


NewYork:    EATON    &    MAINS 
Cincinnati  :    JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
EATON  &  MAINS. 


3X 

3)3 


/VL- 


PREFACE 


The  plan  of  writing  an  appreciation  of  the  itin- 
erant preachers  of  Methodism,  who  went  out  to 
possess  the  American  frontier  a  century  ago,  was 
suggested  by  the  late  Andrew  Carpenter  Wheeler, 
well  known  by  his  pen  name,  /.  P.  Mozvbray. 

Together  we  had  been  attracted  to  this  field, 
which  investigation  showed  to  have  been  generally 
neglected  by  historians.  Mr.  Wheeler,  who  was 
the  son  of  Methodist  parents,  in  later  life  developed 
a  strong  impulse  of  filial  veneration  for  the  genius 
and  achievement  of  his  father's  church.  Unhappily, 
he  did  not  live  to  complete  the  plan  that  was  com- 
menced with  a  keen  literary  zest  and  the  ardor  of 
an  affectionate  impulse ;  but,  fortunately,  he  prepared 
a  reminiscent  chapter  relating  to  Henry  Bascom, 
and  some  pages  that  have  been  incorporated  with 
other  material  in  the  present  work. 

Although  not  claiming  the  same  close  affiliation 
with  the  Methodist  Church  as  did  my  greatly  loved 
associate,  I  have  endeavored,  with  an  earnest  and 
reverent  spirit,  to  carry  out  alone  the  purpose  which 
we  formed  together. 

Edgar  Mayhew  Bacon. 

Tarrytown,  New  York. 

550310 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  Introductory 7 

II.  Along  a  Blazed  Trail 29 

III.  The  Field 52 

IV.  Some  of  the  Sowers 75 

V.  From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting 105 

VI.  Frontier  Women  and  Preachers'  Wives 127 

VII.  Another  Company  of  the  Sowers 133 

VIII.  A  Recollection  of  Bascom 158 

IX.  The  Songs  of  Zion 164 

X.  From  Small  Beginnings 170 

XI.  The  Methodist  Church  and  the  Union 186 

XII.  The  After- Word 194 


NATION  BUILDERS 


CHAPTER  I 
Introductory 


The  recent  practical  modification  of  the  itiner- 
ancy, that  distinctive  and  unique  feature  of  the  Meth- 
odist Episcopal  Church,  has  closed  a  very  important 
chapter  of  church  history.  Let  it  be  frankly  said 
that  if  the  chapter  had  been  merely  one  of  denomina- 
tional record  this  book  would  never  have  taken  the 
form  that  it  has.  The  magnificent  and  unexcelled 
achievements  of  the  Methodist  itinerants  belong  to 
the  broader  field  of  general  history.  Specifically, 
they  had  to  do  with  the  social  and  practical,  not  less 
than  with  the  religious,  development  of  an  impor- 
tant section  of  the  United  States.  By  keeping  alive 
the  consciences  of  men  and  developing  ideals  of  life 
and  character  in  people  who  would  otherwise  have 
been  lawless,  they  made  strong  and  efficient  citizens 
of  the  republic.  They  influenced  national  legislation 
by  moral  force,  and  put  their  permanent  stamp  upon 


8  Natiox  Builders 

the  character  of  states.  We  submit  with  all  confi- 
dence that  no  institution,  no  agency,  has  accom- 
plished more  in  these  directions,  and  few  have  done 
so  much,  as  have  the  itinerant  ministry  of  the  Meth- 
odist Episcopal  Church.  As  a  molding  and  govern- 
ing influence,  working  for  righteousness  in  state  as 
well  as  in  church.  Methodism  stands,  historically,  in 
the  very  first  rank. 

It  would  no  more  be  possible  to  write  the  history 
of  some  of  our  vSouthern  and  Western  states  fairly, 
leaving  out  Methodism,  than  to  write  the  story  of 
Scotland  and  omit  John  Knox,  or  to  eliminate  the 
Reformed  Church  from  the  history  of  Holland.  If 
we  would  understand  the  development  of  the  repub- 
lic from  the  borders  of  the  original  states  to  the 
INIississippi,  between  1800  and  1830,  we  must  study 
the  influence  of  the  Methodist  itinerant. 

In  glancing  at  the  history  of  Methodism  with  the 
narrative  purpose  of  dealing  mainly  with  its  Amer- 
ican development,  it  is  not  necessary  to  examine  into 
its  doctrinal  peculiarities  nor  to  traverse  again  the 
much  harrowed  field  of  evangelical  theology;  but  it 
is  necessary  to  the  purpose  of  this  book  to  mark  as 
clearly  as  is  possible  one  or  two  of  the  distinctive 
features  of  that  movement  and  to  learn  if  possible 
to  what  it  owed  its  remarkable  initial  vigor  and 
increase.  The  history  of  Methodism  presents  us 
with  a  combination  of  the  spiritual  and  communal 


Introductory  9 

impulses  that  was  unique.  Those  impulses  were  con- 
tributed on  the  one  side  by  a  return  to  the  super- 
natural element,  and  on  the  other  side  to  the  dem- 
ocratic spirit  which  came  to  its  aid.  Dissimilar  as 
the  motive  powers  were,  and  unsuspected  as  the  alli- 
ance was  by  John  Wesley  himself,  there  is  now  no 
doubt  that  his  practical  application  of  the  doctrine 
of  justification  by  faith  and  his  direct  appeal  to  the 
common  people  were  the  joint  factors  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  new  church,  to  the  ultimate  success  of 
which  his  organizing  ability  and  governmental  tact 
were  to  contribute  in  an  extraordinary  degree. 

Like  other  religious  movements  which  owed  their 
origin  to  a  protest  against  ecclesiastical  inertia  or 
endowed  wrongs,  it  grew  into  an  independent  and 
aggressive  organization  without  the  lust  of  power, 
and  wholly  without  the  intention  or  desire  of  its 
great  organizer  to  detach  himself  from  the  parent 
establishment,  the  Church  of  England. 

History  does  not  record  many  more  brilliant  ex- 
amples of  a  reformer  pushed  by  overruling  events 
against  his  own  preferences  and  prejudices  into  a 
stupendous  task  of  reconstruction.  Intellectually  and 
by  choice  he  was  an  imperialist,  and  intensely  loyal 
to  his  king  and  church.  On  his  religious  side  he  be- 
came in  the  course  of  events  as  stanch  a  democrat  as 
Saint  Paul.  Shut  out  of  his  own  church  by  the  stu- 
pidity of  institutionalism,  he  went  straight  to  the 


10  Nation  Builders 

common  people,  not  because  he  for  one  moment  be- 
lieved that  the  common  people  were  denied  any  rights 
even  of  opinion  or  action,  but  because  he  thought 
they  ought  to  be  saved  from  their  sins,  and  it  never 
once  occurred  to  him  that  in  this  step  he  was  making 
an  alliance  with  the  democratic  spirit  which  was 
already  stirring  and  for  which  a  new  continent  was 
opening.  With  an  eloquence  and  logical  astuteness 
which,  as  JMacaulay  acknowledges,  might  have  made 
him  eminent  in  literature,  and  with  a  genius  for  gov- 
ernment not  inferior  to  that  of  Richelieu,  he  gave 
himself  to  the  humble  and  arduous  work  of  saving 
souls,  and  abandoned  all  honors  that  his  genius 
might  have  attained.  In  the  words  of  John  Nichols, 
"Instead  of  being  an  ornament  to  literature  he  was 
a  blessing  to  his  age,  and  instead  of  being  the  genius 
of  his  age  he  preferred  to  be  the  servant  of  God." 

He  believed  to  the  last  in  the  sacraments  and  tradi- 
tions of  the  mother  church,  but  in  his  work  he  was 
compelled  to  modify  one  and  abandon  the  other.  He 
never  outgrew  his  reverence  and  affection  for  the 
aristocratic  prerogatives  and  the  ancient  privileges 
of  that  church,  but  events  made  him  contravene 
both. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  Wesley 
at  the  beginning  of  his  work  contemplated  even  with 
the  eye  of  imagination  the  development  of  a  free 
church  in  a  free  state,  or  a  self-supporting  Chris- 


Introductory  i  i 

tianity  of  many  folds  in  independent  but  friendly 
relation  to  the  civil  government.  Nor  is  there  any 
reason  to  believe  that  he  ever  suspected  that  his 
doctrinal  utterances  or  his  simplified  ritual  and  pop- 
ular appeals  were  powerful  adjuncts  to  that  demand 
for  freedom  and  individual  right  of  judgment  and 
experience  which  was  e\'ery  day  becoming  more 
manifest  in  English  politics. 

Doctrinally,  the  tenets  of  Wesley  furnished  noth- 
ing absolutely  new.  That  which  proved  a  stumbling- 
block  to  the  Anglican  establishment,  namely,  "justi- 
fication by  faith"  and  "the  witness  of  the  Spirit,"  lie 
more  or  less  conspicuous  along  the  Christian  high- 
way from  Saint  Paul  to  Anselm  and  Luther,  and 
proclaim  themselves  in  \A^yclif  and  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards. But  it  is  very  sure  that  with  the  exception 
of  Saint  Paul  not  one  of  these  eminent  men,  or  a 
score  of  others  in  both  branches  of  the  Christian 
church,  who  held  at  various  times  that  the  regen- 
eration of  the  sinner  is  a  supernatural  act  of  God, 
often  instantaneous  and  always  attested  by  the  con- 
sciousness and  corroborated  by  the  life,  ever  made 
such  practical  application  of  it  or  so  caught  the  at- 
tention of  the  mass  of  men  by  a  simple  and  author- 
itative presentment  of  it  as  did  John  Wesley. 

One  may  sufficiently  summarize  the  whole  of 
Wesley's  doctrine  in  the  early  and  familiar  phrases : 
"original  sin,"  "repentance,"  "regeneration,"  "justi- 


12  Nation  Builders 

fication  by  faith,"  "sanctification,"  and  "the  witness 
of  the  Spirit."  The  conflict  raged  for  half  a  century 
around  the  question  of  instantaneous  conversion  and 
regeneration.  Wesley  stood  squarely  and  invincibly 
to  it,  and  he  did  this  the  more  efficaciously  because 
it  was  not  the  result  of  an  induction,  but  the  com- 
manding announcement  of  a  fact  in  his  own  experi- 
ence— a  fact  which  he  did  not  hesitate  to  tell  his 
listeners  was  an  attestation  from  on  high  within  the 
reach  of  the  humblest  of  them.  No  one  put  the 
claim  of  supernaturalism  so  insistently  and  so  simply, 
acknowledging  flatly  that  every  man  could  be  in 
himself  the  witness  of  a  miracle. 

In  defense  of  his  teaching  he  wrote : 
"That  the  conversion  of  sinners  is  no  miracle  is 
new  doctrine  indeed.  So  new  to  me  that  I  never 
heard  of  it  before,  either  among  Protestants  or 
Papists.  I  think  a  miracle  is  a  work  of  omnipotence 
wrought  by  the  supernatural  power  of  God.  Now, 
if  the  conversion  of  sinners  to  holiness  is  not  such 
a  work  I  cannot  tell  what  it  is." 

Wesley  was  thus  corroborating  what  had  been 
said  of  him  with  unintentional  accuracy  by  a  bitter 
ecclesiastical  opponent — he  was  popularizing  the 
miraculous ;  and  this  charge,  filtered  through  the 
dense  brains  of  the  conforming  mobs,  early  ran  into 
that  other  charge,  that  the  Methodists  were  in  league 
with  the  Papists.    But  whatever  may  have  been  the 


Introductory  13 

motive  of  the  first  accusation  and  the  ignoble  sense 
in  which  it  was  made,  the  fact  remains  that  Wesley 
did  popularize  the  miraculous  in  the  sense  that  he 
brought  the  internal  evidence  and  the  external  fruit 
of  it  to  the  common  apprehension. 

Of  the  relation  that  Wesleyanism  bears  to  its  time 
no  estimate  can  be  justly  made  that  overlooks  this 
return  to  primitive  belief.  It  is  of  less  account  to 
us  to  know  how  far  the  purely  human  elements  and 
influences  of  excitement  and  emotional  elation  col- 
ored and  coerced  the  imagination  and  judgment  of 
the  reformers  than  it  is  to  know  that  Wesley  planted 
himself  squarely  against  the  first  assaults  of  atheism 
upon  miracles,  which  assaults  were  to  grow  in  a  later 
philosophy  to  be  the  most  powerful  and  insidious 
of  arguments  against  Christianity.  It  was  that  de- 
sideratum which  Wesley,  more  than  any  other  man, 
met  and  answered  in  a  singularly  apostolic  and  sim- 
ple manner.  Vital  Christianity  in  England  was  not 
saved  by  its  doctors  and  school  men.  At  a  divine 
command  it  arose  and  walked.  It  survived  the 
assaults  of  skepticism  and  the  deadening  influence 
of  aestheticism  not  by  an  intellectual  advance,  but 
by  an  evangelical  return  to  its  supernatural  charac- 
ter; and  this  return  was  not  alone  obedient,  but 
heroic.  Its  whole  effort  was  not  to  furnish  dis- 
putants, but  witnesses,  and  the  sum  total  of  the 
rejoinder  that  it  made  both  to  the  church  and  to  the 


14  Nation  Builders 

philosophy  of  its  time,  far  from  being  metaphysical 
or  doctrinal,  shapes  itself  into  the  final  and  unan- 
swerable reply  of  the  blind  man :  '*\\'hether  he  be 
a  sinner  or  no,  I  know  not :  one  thing  I  know, 
that,  whereas  I  was  blind,  now  T  see." 

Whatever  may  be  the  later  conclusion  of  a  reli- 
gious philosophy  with  regard  to  the  mysterious 
operation  of  the  mind  in  what  the  Methodists  call 
a  change  of  heart,  there  can  be  no  sort  of  doubt 
as  to  what  John  Wesley  thought  it  was,  nor 
can  there  be  any  hesitancy  in  acknowledging  the 
work  it  accomplished  in  reanimating  a  fossilized 
religion. 

What  Wesley  tried  to  do  was  to  lift  faith  from 
a  merely  moral  observance  to  a  positive  religious 
experience.  Regeneration  was  an  act  of  God  regis- 
tered in  the  soul  quite  independently  of  ceremonial 
or  decretal ;  and,  as  God  was  no  respecter  of  persons, 
this  experience  was  as  possible  in  a  coal  mine  as  in 
a  cathedral.  Old  as  this  declaration  may  have  been 
to  the  established  church,  it  was,  at  close  range,  a 
I)iece  of  insufferable  effrontery  when  it  was  not 
.sheer  blasphemy,  ".^ir."  said  the  Bishop  (^f  l'>ristol 
to  John  Wesley,  "this  pretense  to  extraordinary  gifts 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  is  a  horrid  thing,  a  very  horrid 
thing,  sir.  T  advi.se  you  to  go  hence."  That  nearly 
all  the  bishops  .so  regarded  il,  and  that  some  of  them 
did  not  .scruple  to  avail  themselves  of  the  prejudice 


Introductory  15 

and  ignorance  of  their  followers  to  incite  brutal 
opposition  to  Wesley,  no  one  now  denies. 

With  the  usual  fatuity  of  institutionalism,  the 
church  proceeded  to  thrust  Wesley  and  his  followers 
into  an  independent  and  aggressive  organization, 
which  was  to  bring  about  the  very  relations  which 
Wesley  deprecated  and  the  church  feared.  Once 
organized  and  moving,  it  was  very  evident  that 
Methodism  could  not  exist  without  either  modifying 
the  conditions  which  opposed  it  or  by  finding  a  new 
area  for  its  expansion.  It  did  both.  A  new  evan- 
gelicanism  slowly  permeated  the  English  church, 
and  a  new  continent  opened  its  broad  arms  to 
receive  it.^ 

The  most  important  and  most  immediate  of  the 
temporal  influences  that  led  to  the  organization  of 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  and  to  its  inde- 
pendence from  the  Wesleyan  connection  in  Eng- 
land, was  the  conflict  of  the  colonies  with  the  mother 
country.  The  spirit  of  independence  was,  as  we 
say,  in  the  air,  and  must  be  supposed  to  have  imbued 
not  only  political,  social,  and  business  circles,  but  to 
have  influenced  the  counsels  of  religious  bodies. 

From  the  novel  spectacle  of  a  free  state  the  minds 

' "  Was  it  no  boon  to  you  that  Charles  Wesley,  the  sweet  poet  of  the 
Wesleyan  movement,  accompanied  his  brother  to  this  country ?  Thus  to 
you  also  was  communicated,  by  strange  interpositions  of  Providence,  the 
electric  thrill  of  that  awakening  which  startled  the  eighteenth  century  from 
its  torpor  of  indolence  and  death."— Farca/W/  Address  of  Archdeacon  Farrar 
in  America. 


1 6  Nation  Builders 

of  men  advanced,  as  by  a  natural  sequence,  to  the 
contemplation  of  an  independent  church — that  is, 
a  church  not  only  dissociated  from  state  control,  but 
also  released  from  a  restrictive  subservience  to  a 
foreign  ecclesiastical  authority.  While  retaining 
a  close  paternal  relationship  with  English  Wesleyan- 
ism,  and  abating  no  jot  of  reverence  and  love  for  its 
great  founder,  the  Alethodist  Society  in  America 
began  to  feel  the  necessity  of  a  separation  in  church 
organization.  This  impulse  was  greatly  strength- 
ened by  the  departure  from  America  of  nearly  all 
the  English  preachers  and  exhorters  of  the  society 
and  the  assumption  of  their  work  by  a  number  of 
young  men  of  American  birth.  At  one  time  Francis 
Asbury  seems  to  have  been  the  only  Methodist 
preacher  of  English  birth  in  the  thirteen  states,  and 
Asbury 's  sympathies  were  all  American. 

The  Presbyterian,  Congregational,  Dutch  Re- 
formed, and  several  other  churches  did  not  suffer 
such  depletion  in  tlie  ranks  of  their  ministry,  because 
a  larger  proportion  of  their  clergy  were,  either  by 
birth  or  interest,  more  closely  identified  with  the 
fortunes  of  the  states.  Next  to  the  Methodists  the 
older  branch  of  the  Episcopal  Church  suffered.  The 
slicplierds  departed,  never  to  return,  and  tlu-ir  places 
could  be  filled  only  by  extraordinary  means. 

There  was  a  most  serious  lack  of  men  who  by 
ordination  were  authorized  to  administer  any  of  the 


Introductory  17 

rites  which  con\iction  and  custom  prescribe  for  the 
church.  Nor  was  it  possible,  without  great  difficulty 
and  sacrifice,  to  supply  this  deficiency.  Only  by 
extraordinary  means  could  the  candidate  for  ordina- 
tion or  appointment  accomplish  his  purpose,  for  in 
all  the  American  world  there  was  no  bishop.  Such 
aspirants  as  there  were  for  the  Episcopal  ministry, 
whether  of  the  conservative  establishment  or  the 
Wesleyan  connection,  A\ere  obliged  to  go  to  England 
for  ordination.  The  x^rchbishop  of  Canterbury  de- 
cided that  such  applicants  must  take  the  oath  of 
allegiance  to  the  King  of  England  before  being  per- 
mitted to  preach  the  gospel  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  That  this  objection  was  not  an  insuperable 
one  the  continuance  of  the  older  branch  in  America 
has  shown;  but  the  Methodists,  left  almost  without 
ministers,  and  put  to  the  greatest  inconvenience  for 
lack  of  those  who  were  authorized  to  administer  the 
sacraments,  to  marry,  baptize,  and  bury  them,  re- 
sorted to  extraordinary  measures. 

Benjamin  Franklin,  who  affiliated  with  no  church, 
yet  was  the  friend  and  adviser  of  all,  was  consulted. 
Two  young  men  who  had  in  vain  applied  to  Canter- 
bury went  to  Paris  to  have  a  talk  with  Dr.  Franklin, 
and  his  advice  was  delightfully  characteristic.  Let 
the  Episcopalian  clergy  in  America  either  become 
Presbyterians,  he  suggested,  or  else  elect  a  bishop 
for  themselves.    This  matter-of-fact,  shrewd  counsel 


1 8  Nation  Builders 

was,  to  an  English  churchman's  views,  as  heretical 
as  it  was  revolutionary.  It  met  no  favor  from  the 
clergy  of  the  established  English  church,  and  it  hor- 
rified even  so  ardent  a  reformer  as  Charles  Wesley. 
There  were,  however,  certain  men,  inspired  with  a 
desire  to  proclaim  salvation,  who  heard  the  advice 
of  America's  foremost  philosopher  with  deep  satis- 
faction. That  advice  coincided  in  spirit  with  the 
counsel  given  by  John  Wesley  to  his  American  fol- 
lowers. It  is  probable  that  Franklin  was  not  the 
first  to  conceive  the  idea  of  separation  from  the 
English  church,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  his 
words  had  weight  even  with  those  who  deplored 
what  they  were  accustomed  to  call  his  rationalism. 

Whatever  the  relative  influence  of  several  coun- 
selors, the  influence  of  events  was  pressing  in  one 
direction — toward  the  separation  of  the  American 
followers  of  Wesley  from  the  parent  church,  to 
which  he  still  claimed  allegiance. 

There  seems  to  have  been  a  strong  and  persistent 
inclination  among  the  young  men  w  ho  were  gather- 
ing around  Francis  Asbury  to  organize  an  inde- 
pendent body,  but  not  until  Wesley's  views  upon  the 
subject  hacl  been  received  did  Asbury  feel  satisfied 
to  advance.  \Vhcn  first  appealed  to,  W'eslcy  had 
advised  patience,  and  the  veneration  of  his  American 
co-religionists  for  his  almost  apostolic  personality 
kcpl    tlicii-    impntieiuc    in    clicrk.    and    llicy    wisely 


Introductory  19 

waited  for  an  initiative  that  bore  the  weight  of  his 
authority. 

As  elsewhere  noted,  Mr.  Wesley's  final  attitude 
toward  the  organization  of  a  separate  church  in 
America  showed  how  far  he  had  drifted,  and  how 
insensibly,  from  the  method  and  government  of  the 
Episcopal  Church.  His  ordination  of  Dr.  Coke  to 
a  superintendency  that  was  in  all  but  name  a  bish- 
opric was  accompanied  by  an  avowal  of  his  implicit 
belief  in  his  own  providential  calling  to  perform  that 
act,  which  might  justly  at  that  time  have  been 
regarded  as  a  usurpation  of  episcopal  authority. 
When  Francis  Asbury  was  designated  by  Wesley 
as  Coke's  coadjutor  the  new  superintendent  was 
greatly  impressed  by  "the  wisdom,  consideration, 
love,  meekness,  and  authority"  of  his  associate. 

A  "Conference" — the  word  was  not  as  familiar 
then  as  it  has  since  become — w^as  called  at  Balti- 
more, w^hen  sixty  out  of  the  eighty-one  American 
ministers  of  Wesley's  following  met,  either  on 
Christmas  Eve  or  Christmas  Day,  in  1784,  and  there 
established  the  form  of  worship  and  of  church  gov- 
ernment to  which,  in  the  main,  their  successors  have 
adhered  for  a  century.  Then  a  unanimous  vote  de- 
cided the  independence  of  the  American  church,  to 
which  the  name  Methodist  Episcopal  was  officially 
and  formally  given. 

Asbury  was  ordained,  lirsl,  deacon;  then,  elder; 


20  Nation  Builders 

and  finally — the  appointment  by  Wesley  having 
been  popularly  sustained — was  invested  by  the  lay- 
ing on  of  hands  with  the  authority  of  a  bishop, 
though  at  first  the  title  ''superintendent"  was  used 
instead  of  the  older  Episcopal  name.  Before  long  the 
word  "bishop"  was  substituted  for  "superintendent," 
at  first  in  popular  usage  and  afterward  in  the  printed 
Minutes  and  Discipline  of  the  society.  So  in  a  few 
years  Wesleyism  had  already  outrun  Wesley,  and 
the  great  initiative  was  solemnly  assumed  by  the 
fathers  of  American  Methodism.  The  government 
of  the  new  body  consisted  of  superintendents  (or 
bishops),  elders,  and  deacons.  Of  the  elders  there 
were  two  classes  :  first,  the  presiding  elders ;  and,  sec- 
ond, the  traveling  elders,  who  were  also  empowered 
to  "administer  the  ordinances  and  perform  the  office 
of  marrying,"  and  who  were  elected  by  the  Annual 
Conference  and  ordained  by  bishops  and  elders  by  a 
laying  on  of  hands.  A  bishop,  having  been  elected 
by  the  General  Conference,  must  be  ordained  by  the 
imposition  of  hands  by  three  bishops,  or  one  bishop 
and  two  elders. 

The  great,  vital  feature  of  the  new  church  was 
its  itinerant  system.  There  had  been  itinerants  be- 
fore in  llic  world's  history,  and  missionaries  of 
nearly  every  creed,  and  their  labors  and  devotion 
have  been  the  subject  of  an  almost  endless  succes- 
sion of  books,  while  admiration  for  their  incslima- 


Introductory  21 

ble  courage  has  swayed  the  hearts  of  all  Christen- 
dom; but  never  before  did  a  church  destined  to 
become  great  and  powerful  in  the  family  of  Christ 
establish  as  its  main  working  force  a  body  of  men 
devoted  to  a  perpetual  pilgrimage,  yet  held  strictly 
to  the  rules  and  discipline  of  ecclesiastical  govern- 
ment. 

This  was  the  strangest  anomaly  of  the  times. 
The  man  who  shook  his  bishop's  hand  after  Con- 
ference and  turned  his  horse's  head  toward  the 
forest,  with  no  property  except  the  animal  he  be- 
strode, the  homespun  clothes  upon  his  back,  and  the 
Bible  in  his  pocket,  with  no  protection  from  the  dan- 
gers of  the  wilderness  save  in  the  outreaching  arm 
of  an  ever-present  Providence,  with  no  constraint 
upon  his  movements  save  that  imposed  by  his  own 
conscience,  was  held  to  a  strict  accountability 
through  all  his  trackless  circuit,  and  at  stated  inter- 
vals returned  to  render  a  report  to  the  body — the 
very  democratic  and  elective  body — of  which  he  was 
a  member.  Never  in  the  world  have  the  principles 
and  methods  of  democracy  been  more  triumphantly 
illustrated  than  by  the  Methodist  circuit  riders,  who, 
having  aided  to  elect  an  ecclesiastical  superior,  fol- 
lowed his  commands  with  the  obedience  of  soldiers, 
even  to  death. 

The  first  Methodist  Conference  held  in  America 
was  in   Philadelphia,   on  July   14,    1773,   in  Saint 


22  Nation  Builders 

George's  (Episcopal)  Church.  The  Episcopal 
churches  and  clergymen  in  America  seem  to  have 
been  at  first  hospitable  to  the  new  body.  It  should 
never  be  forgotten  that  Methodism  was  at  the  outset 
distinctly  a  reformation  within  the  church.  It  was 
not  an  effort  to  found  a  new  church,  though  circum- 
stances led  to  that  end. 

The  ten  members  of  the  Methodist  connection 
who  were  present  at  the  Philadelphia  Conference 
were  Thomas  Rankin,  Richard  Boardman,  Joseph 
Pilmoor,  Francis  Asbury.  Richard  Wright,  George 
Shadford,  Thomas  Webb,  John  King,  Abraham 
Whitworth,  and  Joseph  Yearbry.  The  membership 
then  reported  was  i,i6o.  By  1775  the  membership 
had  grown  to  3,148.  In  1777  the  roll  of  members 
showed  6,968  and  38  itinerants.  In  1783,  shortly 
after  the  close  of  the  war  for  independence,  Francis 
Asbury  wrote:  "We  have  about  14,000  members. 
80  traveling  preachers,  and  between  30  and  40  cir- 
cuits. .  .  .  The  gospel  has  taken  a  universal  spread." 

Even  in  colonial  days  New  ^'ork  city  was  a 
refuge  for  all  the  creeds  of  Christendom  and  for 
some  with  wliicli  Christendom  had  no  dealings 
whatever.  It  was  from  an  early  date  a  very  cos- 
mopolis  of  sects,  vying  with  Khtulc  island  in  this 
particular,  for  it  is  said  that  it  harbored  no  less 
than  a  dozen  societies  or  congregations  at  a  time 
when  1I1C  neighboring  colonies  drew  sliail  lines,  and 


Introductory  23 

some  even  advocated  the  whipping  post  and  the 
fagot.  By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
two  Protestant  denominations  had  so  far  outgrown 
all  others  that  they  probably  included  more  than 
half  of  the  churchgoing  population.  The  Dutch 
Reformed  Church,  by  right  of  priority,  might  ha\'e 
claimed  the  honors  due  to  an  established  form  of 
worship;  but  the  Episcopal  service,  being  more 
familiar  to  the  high  officials  from  England,  became 
a  strong  rival.  About  these  twain  gathered  Pres- 
byterians. Roman  Catholics,  Baptists,  Lutherans, 
Quakers,  and  every  familiar  form  of  ecclesiastical 
dissent. 

Some  immigrants,  arriving  in  1760,  brought  with 
them  a  revitalized  conception  of  an  old  faith,  to 
add  to  the  already  long  list  of  creeds.  They  w'ere 
but  a  handful,  a  poor  company  of  unfortunate  Ger- 
mans, originally  from  the  Palatinate,  but  hailing 
last  from  Balligarame,  in  Ireland.  They  had  been 
twice  or  thrice  banished,  but  they  had  found  in 
religion  that  vitality  which  the  church  of  the  Dutch 
first  families  in  New  York  and  the  church  of  the 
British  officers  were  in  danger  of  forgetting  save 
as  a  vague  tradition.  The  Palatines  brought  to 
America  the  seed  for  a  new  planting. 

Their  novel  development  of  faith  bore  the  im- 
press of  John  Wesley's  character,  and  was  after- 
ward for  a  while  known  by  his  name,  though  we 


24  Nation  Builders 

generally  know  it  as  jNIelhodism.  Its  introduction 
into  New  York  was  so  unostentatious  that  not  a 
dozen  people  were  aware  of  its  arrival.  The  ser- 
mons that  were  preached  from  old  conservative 
pulpits  were  wordy  and  doctrinal.  Men  and  wom- 
en were  to  be  saved  or  damned  according  to  the 
logic  of  their  creeds.  Those  who  brought  a  fresh 
confidence  in  the  vitality  of  faith  came  with  a 
mission. 

For  the  first  six  years  the  Palatines  were  without 
church  or  chapel,  content  to  live  quietly,  governed 
by  conscience,  avoiding  wrangling,  and  cleaving  to 
their  ideals.  Then  one  of  them — a  woman  named 
Barbara  Heck — remonstrated  with  her  co-religion- 
ists about  their  inactivity.  How  long  it  was  neces- 
sary to  urge  them  we  do  not  know,  but  it  is  a  historic 
fact  that  in  1766  Philip  Embury,  who  had  been  a 
local  preacher  in  Ireland,  opened  his  house  for 
])ublic  worship,  and  there  held  the  first  service  of 
the  first  Methodist  church  in  America.  The  impor- 
tant landmark  was  situated  on  what  is  now  Park 
Place,  then  called  Barrack  Street.  It  was  some- 
what far  uptown  in  that  day,  and  wc  are  told 
that  the  congregation  that  met  there  numbered  six 
.souls. 

A  year  passed,  and  the  vitality  which  has  .so  dis- 
tinguished this  denomination  began  to  evince  itself. 
The  congregation   had  grown — had   outgrown   its 


Introductory  25 

contracted  rooms  on  Barrack  Street,  and  now  wor- 
shiped in  more  commodious  quarters.  It  hired  the 
rigging  loft  at  what  is  now  120  WilHam  Street. 
The  entire  denomination  ought  to  own  that  spot  and 
erect  there  a  memorial  worthy  of  it.  The  rigging 
loft  stood  for  nearly  a  century  after  the  Methodists 
began  to  meet  there.  The  most  notable  figure  in 
this  early  chapter  of  church  history  was  Captain 
Thomas  Webb,  an  officer  in  the  British  army,  who 
preached  in  his  scarlet  regimentals.  Tradition  tells 
us  that  he  was  large  and  imposing  in  figure  and  that 
he  was  blind  in  one  eye.  He  was  said  to  be  an 
eloquent  exhorter,  and  did  much  to  draw  people 
to  the  new  religious  society. 

A  year  more,  and  the  rigging  loft  was  abandoned 
for  a  church — an  actual  church,  built  on  a  lot  on 
John  Street.  The  lot  cost  about  fifteen  hundred 
dollars,  which  was  raised  by  subscription,  the  mili- 
tant preacher  heading  the  list  with  thirty  pounds. 
It  is  both  interesting  and  instructive  to  read  the  list 
of  the  friends  that  the  new  movement  had  won  in 
two  years'  time.  The  English  clergymen  gave  "ac- 
cording to  their  means."  Oliver  de  Lancey  put 
down  £6  I  OS.,  and  James  Jarvis  gave  in  all  three 
times  as  much ;  while  William  Lupton  equaled  Cap- 
tain Webb's  munificent  gift.  The  names  of  the  Liv- 
ingstons, Rhinelanders,  Goelet,  Walton,  Rutgers, 
Desbrosses,  Van  Wyck,  Duane,  De  Peyster,  and 


26  Nation  Builders 

twenty  others  that  are  part  of  the  city's  foun- 
dation walls  are  to  be  found  on  that  subscription 
list. 

The  new  church  was  dedicated  in  1768.  It  was 
a  little  back  from  the  thoroughfare,  probably  with 
a  grassy  yard  in  front,  and  it  was  flanked  by  the 
preacher's  house,  or  parsonage.  This  first  John 
Street  Methodist  Church  was  a  stone  structure,  sixty 
by  forty-two  feet,  with  galleries  that  were  reached 
by  ladders.  It  was  called  the  Wesleyan  Chapel,  and 
it  is  interesting  to  know  that  this  was  the  first  use 
of  the  name.  There  were  no  other  rooms  than  the 
main  auditorium,  where  the  worshipers  were  divided 
according  to  sex.  There  was  no  sumptuous  ease  and 
no  discrimination  made  for  churchgoers  of  quality. 
The  seats,  or  benches,  had  neither  cushions  nor 
backs.  Mr.  Embury  was  the  regular  minister  until 
1770,  and  it  is  a  tradition  that  he  assisted  to  build 
the  church  and  made  its  uncomfortable  furniture, 
for  he  was  a  carpenter  and  worked  at  his  trade  for 
a  livelihood. 

When  the  congregation  had  grown  to  a  thou- 
sand people,  which  it  did  in  about  four  years  from 
the  start,  Mr.  Robert  Williams,  who  had  from 
Wesley  a  commission  to  preach,  took  the  pastorate. 
The  following  extract  from  tlic  minute  book  of  the 
church,  showing  the  disbursements  on  Mr.  Wil- 
haiiis's  account,  has  been  published: 


Introductory  27 

1769 

Sept.  20.  Mr.  Jarvis  for  a  hat  for  Mr.  Williams f^i     5  o 

Sept.  22.  Book  for  Mr.  Williams 9 

Oct.      9.  Cloak  for  Mr.  Robert  Williams 3     06 

1770 
July    26.  Paid  Mr.  Maloney  for  shaving  preachers. .  .    256 
Nov.  22.  Paid    Mr.    Boardman    for    one    quarter's 

clothing 7    10  o 

1771 
May    16.   Castor  oil  for  Mr.  Pilmoor o     30 

1772 
July     16.   Cleaning   the  dwelHng-house    and   house- 
keeping, washing  for  the  preacher,  etc.  .5     38 

The  Mr.  Boardman,  who  is  mentioned  as  having 
recei\-ed  a  quarter's  clothing — whatever  that  may 
mean — and  Mr.  Pihnoor,  were  two  missionaries 
that  John  Wesley  sent  out  at  the  same  time  that  he 
gave  Mr.  Williams  his  warrant  to  preach.  In  fact, 
Williams  was  to  report  to  the  two  missionaries  and 
work  under  their  direction,  but  he  arrived  in  New 
York  before  them,  with  the  result  that  he  was  set- 
tled in  the  new  church  for  a  while.  Mr.  Pilmoor 
afterward  became  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of 
England.  Mr.  Boardman  returned  to  England  be- 
fore the  War  of  the  Re\'olution,  and  died  there  in 
1782.  The  missionaries  who  succeeded  these  two 
were  the  great  Francis  Asbury,  the  father  of  the 
Methodist  Church  in  America,  and  Richard  Wright, 
his  associate. 

In  1773  Thomas  Rankin  became  the  pastor  of 
the  John  Street  Church,  and  then,  at  intervals  of 


28  Nation  Builders 

one  year,  George  Shadford,  James  Dempster,  Daniel 
Ruff,  and  John  JMann.  The  last-named  came  in 
troublous  times  (1778),  and  simply  took  up  the 
work  which  others  had  somewhat  hastily  laid  down. 
He  was  a  "local  preacher,"  who  was  not  to  be 
scared  away  from  his  post  by  war's  alarms  till  relief 
came.  He  preached  with  all  the  power  that  was  in 
him,  and  resigned  at  length  to  Mr.  Samuel  Spraggs, 
who  came  from  Philadelphia  and  stayed  five  years, 
being  unable  to  get  away  or  to  procure  anyone  to 
take  his  place. 

In  war  time  the  Methodists,  as  a  body,  did  not 
allow  political  differences  to  interfere  with  church 
worship  any  more  than  absolutely  necessary.  The 
Hessians  shared  the  building,  their  chaplains  offi- 
ciating on  Sunday  mornings  and  the  regular  con- 
gregation in  the  evenings.  The  fact  that  many  of 
the  ministers  had  left  the  city  and  churches  were 
closed  in  consequence  led  to  an  increase  rather  than 
a  falling  off  in  the  attendance  at  the  Wesleyan 
Chapel. 

As  there  has  never  been  a  recorded  instance  of  a 
Methodist  meeting  where  a  collection  was  not  taken, 
it  will  surprise  no  one  to  know  that  the  years  of  the 
British  occupancy  of  New  York,  during  the  war  for 
American  independence,  were  not  the  least  prosper- 
ous of  all  during  the  first  quarter  century  of  the 
church's  history. 


CHAPTER  II 
Along  a  Blazed  Trail 

The  course  of  the  circuit  rider  was  a  blazed  trail. 
He  was  a  pioneer  among  the  pioneers,  swept  onward 
by  the  impulse  of  advancing  population,  in  the  very 
forefront  of  the  great  race  migration  that  finally 
peopled  the  West  and  that  made  the  wilderness  to 
blossom,  if  not  with  the  rose,  at  least  with  the  more 
prosaic  fruits  of  industry  and  intelligence. 

The  earliest  chapters  of  Methodist  history  in  Eng- 
land have  been  touched  upon  lightly  in  the  intro- 
ductory pages  of  this  book;  not  fully,  because, 
though  of  themselves  interesting,  yet  they  form  no 
direct  part  of  our  theme.  The  revival  that  com- 
menced within  the  cloistered  walls  of  Oxford,  which 
drew  together  the  little  band  of  devout  youth  that 
won  the  derisive  name  of  the  Pious  Club,  and  which 
sent  John  Wesley  and  his  devoted  companions  out 
to  preach  a  revitalized  religion  in  the  cities  and  by- 
ways of  England,  may  be  referred  to  here  only  as 
the  genesis  of  American  Methodism.  Our  study  is 
of  the  men  who  went  into  the  wilderness  to  preach 
the  gospel,  of  the  tragedy,  the  pathos,  the  humor, 
and  the  heroism  of  their  lives,  but  more  particularly 
of  the  meaning  and  the  result  of  their  mission. 


30  Nation  Builders 

It  is  necessary  that  we  try  to  understand  as  fully 
as  possible  the  religious  condition  of  the  United 
States  when  the  government  was  in  its  infancy ; 
that  we  examine  as  far  as  possible  the  character  and 
causes  of  the  great  advance  that  filled  the  forests 
and  the  plains,  that  swept  over  the  mountains  and 
followed  the  course  of  the  Cumberland  and  the 
Ohio ;  and  that  we  scrutinize  the  sources  of  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  border  states,  which  were  the  great 
field  in  which  Bishop  Asbury  and  his  brave  sub- 
ordinates sowed  the  seed  for  future  harvests. 

At  the  founding  of  the  republic  there  was  for  the 
first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world  a  complete 
divorce  between  church  and  state.  Before  that  time 
the  secular  arm  had  always  been  prompt  to  interfere 
with  religious  dogma  and  jiractice.  The  idea  that 
any  state  could  with  safety  permit  the  independence 
of  the  church  within  its  domain,  or  that  the  church 
could  stand  secure  without  the  support  of  the  state, 
had  never  been  generally  considered  as  sane  proposi- 
tions till  advanced  in  America.  11ic  most  dissolute 
monarchs  that  e\cr  disgraced  their  crowns  were, 
by  virtue  of  their  office,  in  positions  of  ecclesiastical 
authority,  and  even  that  aristocracy  which  is  known 
to  history  as  the  Dutch  republic  clung  to  the 
universal  theory  of  a  dependent  and  subsidized 
church. 

Jt  is  worth  remembering  that  the  conceptiiMi  (»f 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  31 

a  free  church  in  a  free  state  was  not  only  part  of 
the  American  idea,  but  that  it  was  second  to  no 
feature  of  that  national  movement  in  its  originality 
and  importance.  Advanced  in  early  colonial  days 
by  Roger  Williams,  it  was  adopted  by  the  men  who 
signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  is 
amply  guaranteed  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  American  church  history,  therefore,  is  the 
record  of  free  and  independent  societies.  In  this 
respect  it  differs  from  any  record  of  similar  bodies 
in  the  Old  W^orld. 

The  voluntary  surrender  of  all  rights  of  inter- 
ference by  the  government  of  the  United  States 
made  the  natural  development  of  all  religious  sects 
possible.  Over  all  the  land  men  prayed  or  preached 
as  they  chose,  without  priority  of  rank  claimed  by 
one  denomination  above  another.  Xew  England 
Congregationalists,  Pennsylvania  Presbyterians  and 
Quakers,  New  York  Reformed  Dutch,  Maryland 
Catholics,  Virginia  Episcopalians,  or  Rhode  Island 
Baptists — all  expanded  or  contracted  their  spheres 
of  ecclesiastical  influence,  made  differences  and  set- 
tled them — or  left  them  unsettled — established  mis- 
sions, conferences,  publication  offices,  seminaries, 
and  boards  without  hindrance  or  assistance  from 
the  government. 

In  such  a  rivalry  there  could  be  but  one  result : 
the  more  virile  and  competent  churches  forged  to  the 


^2  Nation  Builders 

front,  and  each  society  found  the  field  best  fitted  to 
its  enterprise. 

In  the  North  and  East  the  Presbyterian  and  Con- 
gregational Churches  were  strong  and  sound.  The 
first  named  had  also  a  staunch  following  in  the  more 
southern  of  the  seaboard  states,  particularly  among 
the  Scotch-Irish  inhabitants.  The  Baptists,  except 
in  Rhode  Island,  had  not  reached  the  importance 
they  afterward  attained.  The  Episcopal  Church, 
especially  in  Virginia,  had  been  during  colonial  days 
ministered  to  by  men  whose  notoriously  lax  lives 
were  a  reproach  to  their  generation.  At  the  sound 
of  the  Lexington  fray  these  fox-hunting,  dram- 
drinking  parsons  fied  to  England. 

During  the  same  period  the  more  austere  and 
intellectual  New  England  divine  was  hammering  out 
and  attenuating  his  nugget  of  truth  into  long-spun 
wires  of  theological  webs.  The  water  of  life  seemed 
often  in  danger  of  being  absorbed  and  dissipated 
in  the  dry  sands  of  polemical  controversy. 

Ill  all  the  land  there  had  l)ecn  an  awakening  to 
evangelical  light  when  Whitcficld  made  his  memor- 
able lour  of  Ibo  colonics;  all  sects  had  felt  the  influ- 
ence of  his  preaching,  but  the  vigor  of  that  inspira- 
tion was  greatly  diminished  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution,  and  in  tlic  troubled  years  that  fol- 
Inwcd  that  outbreak  religion  languished  in  America. 

\\'ilh  the  rehabilitation  of  business  and  social  life, 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  33 

the  readjustment  of  old  conditions,  and  the  adoption 
of  new  ones  under  the  new  government,  the  oppor- 
tunity for  the  development  of  a  rehgious  body  that 
could  adapt  its  methods  to  the  exigencies  of  rapidly 
expanding  national  life  was  phenomenally  great. 
The  Methodist  Church  enjoyed  the  great  advantage 
of  being,  like  the  nation,  in  its  formative  stage.  In 
commonwithother  societies,  it  was  relieved  from  sec- 
ular control  and  could  pursue  its  destiny  unchecked. 
There  was  no  preempted  territory  for  it  to  claim 
as  its  right,  but  it  proved  the  potentiality  of  the 
grain  of  mustard  seed.  Its  opportunity,  unlike  that 
of  the  older  and  more  definitely  organized  bodies, 
was  obviously  in  newly  settled  regions,  where  its 
Presbyterian,  Congregational,  or  Dutch  Reformed 
neighbors  had  not  the  advantage  of  a  century  of 
occupation. 

The  preachers  of  the  new  method  were  obliged 
to  contend  with  tremendous  difficulties,  arising  from 
the  unsettled  condition  of  the  border  states  when 
their  greatest  work  was  accomplished.  These  diffi- 
culties were  of  two  sorts,  the  first  grouping  all  of 
the  material  obstacles  and  physical  perils  presented 
by  an  almost  uninhabited  wilderness,  and  the  second 
combining  the  several  impediments  to  progress  that 
were  inseparable  from  communities  scattered  loosely 
over  a  wide  territory  and  living  without  common 
interests  or  aims. 


34  Nation  Builders 

The  first  experimental  confederation  of  states 
lately  emerged  from  the  condition  of  colonial  de- 
pendence did  not  embrace  a  homogeneous  popula- 
tion. Except  in  a  few  seaboard  cities,  as  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  show,  little  groups  of  settlers  or 
scattered  individuals  upon  the  frontiers  lived  isolated 
lives.  The  one  common  bond  of  sympathy  and 
union  had  been  the  war,  and  after  the  war  there  was 
a  tendency  toward  segregation,  especially  in  farm 
and  frontier  life.  Even  the  large  cities  of  the  sea- 
board were  but  imperfectly  informed  about  each 
other.  New  York  and  Boston  were  connected  by 
a  precarious  stage  service,  and  a  journey  from 
Providence  to  Baltimore  was  almost  what  a  jour- 
ney from  Chicago  to  Manila  would  be  at  the  present 
day.  As  a  startling  illustration  of  the  tardiness  with 
which  news  was  conveyed,  Ave  may  be  reminded 
that  George  Washington,  having  closed  his  eyes 
upon  life  at  Mount  Vernon,  was  buried  before  Con- 
gress, then  sitting  at  Philadelphia,  was  informed  of 
his  death.  Ordinary  news  did  not  travel,  even 
slowly.  It  was  too  discouraged  to  move,  and  stayed 
at  lionic. 

By  reviewing  such  facts  as  these  we  receive  a  just 
impression  of  the  conditions  which  the  older  gen- 
eration of  the  Methodist  ministers  had  to  face.  Wc 
know  that  there  are  explosive  substances  whose 
energy  is  expended  along  the  line  of  greatest  re- 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  35 

sistance — so  ^Methodism  exerted  itself  with  the 
greatest  vigor  where  the  obstacles  were  greatest. 
It  displayed  an  apostolic  prescience  in  discovering 
in  the  barred  way  the  way  of  opportunity. 

The  Alethodist  preachers,  though  not  always  men 
of  education,  were,  in  the  broadest  and  truest  sense, 
picked  men.  They  went  into  their  field  w-ith  strong 
convictions,  an  overmastering  sense  of  responsibility, 
the  courage  of  soldiers,  and  the  spirit  of  martyrs. 
No  man  of  weak  will  or  faltering  resolution  could 
have  taken  up  the  life  of  danger  and  self-sacrifice 
demanded  of  every  candidate  for  this  work,  and  no 
man  w^ho  had  not  a  fair  physical  constitution  could 
possibly  have  persevered  in  it.  The  whole  moving 
frontier  of  our  country,  that  rolled  westward  year 
after  year  like  a  resistless  tide,  covered  the  graves 
of  hundreds  of  Methodist  itinerants  who  died  hero- 
ically at  their  posts. 

A  single  circuit  in  the  old  days  might  embrace 
several  hundred  miles  of  unbroken  wilderness, 
where  the  ring  of  the  pioneer's  ax  had  only  begun 
to  be  heard  at  remote  distances;  where  the  most 
familiar  sounds  were  the  cry  of  the  panther  and  the 
yell  of  the  equally  savage  Indian.  If  the  settler,  in 
partial  touch,  perhaps,  w^ith  two  or  three  others  of 
his  adventurous  kind,  provided  with  firearms  and 
protected  by  the  log  walls  of  his  shanty  or  by  a 
palisade  of  logs,  was  in  constant  danger  from  wild 


36  Nation  Builders 

beasts  and  marauding  savages,  what  must  be  thought 
of  the  courage  and  fortitude  of  the  preachers  who 
multipHed  tenfold  those  common  dangers  by  expos- 
ing themseh'es  unshehered,  unaccompanied,  and 
unarmed  in  e\'ery  lonely  valley  and  desolate  moun- 
tain, in  the  vicinity  of  camps  of  hostile  red  men, 
by  fever-haunted  swamps,  and  in  the  path  of  the 
tempest  ?  We  read  in  every  story  of  that  heroic  day 
the  almost  uninterrupted  chronicle  of  pillage,  tor- 
ture, and  massacre,  but  we  have  no  record  of  any 
Methodist  preacher  who  ever  flinched  or  turned  aside 
from  his  circuit  for  fear  of  Creek  or  Cherokee. 

Men  in  all  lands  read  with  a  thrill  of  romance 
the  sagas  of  old  heroes,  the  knightly  tales  of  an  out- 
worn chivalry,  the  adventurous  and  gilded  brigand- 
age of  Sir  Launcelots  and  Sir  Bediveres  and  Sir 
Gawains,  A\ho  went  a-questing  in  that  very  misty 
period  that  is  known  as  "once  upon  a  time";  but 
a  nobler  chivalry,  a  more  exalted  bravery,  was  ex- 
hibited almost  within  our  own  time  by  the  humble 
and  often  forgotten  saddlebag  men  of  Methodism. 

It  is  not  a  forced  comparison  that  places  the  itin- 
erant preacher  on  a  par  with  the  knight  who  prances 
through  the  pages  of  Mallory's  Arthurian  fables. 
No  Galahad  ever  sought  the  Holy  Grail  with  purer 
purpose  than  did  the  Axleys  and  Burkes,  the  Big- 
elows  and  Akcns,  in  Virginia,  Kentucky,  and  Ten- 
nessee, in  Xcw  York,  Ohio,  and  Indiana.     What 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  37 

are  apocryphal  dragons  and  "orgulous"  beasts, 
strangely  misplaced  lions,  or  even  knights  and 
vague  enchantments,  compared  with  forest  fires, 
congestive  fevers,  perils  of  flood  and  tornado,  pierc- 
ing cold,  hungry  wild  beasts,  and  almost  ubiquitous 
savages  of  the  American  forests?  The  giants  and 
ogres  of  fable  were  invented  by  men  who  did  not 
know  the  Snake  and  the  Blackfeet,  the  Pawnee  and 
the  Sioux.  You  may  search  all  the  pages  of  ro- 
mance and  recall  all  that  has  ever  been  written  in 
celebration  of  heroism  and  yet  find  nothing  to  excel 
the  manliness  of  the  men  who  stood  again  and  again 
before  Asbury,  at  the  close  of  a  Conference,  and 
waited,  with  the  cheerfulness  and  fortitude  of  good 
soldiers,  for  orders.  If  any  man  had  an  uncommonly 
good  record,  was  distinguished  by  health  of  body, 
vigor  of  mind,  or  peculiar  beauty  of  character — if  he 
was  one  to  whom  the  heart  of  the  great  leader  went 
out  with  tenderness — that  was  the  man  who  was  apt 
to  find  himself  assigned  to  the  hardest  and  most  dan- 
gerous circuit.  The  post  of  danger  was  considered 
the  post  of  honor,  and  the  man  who  died  at  his 
station  was  as  one  who  had  been  signally  favored 
of  God. 

The  first  associates  of  Bishop  Asbury  were 
Thomas  Rankin,  Richard  Boardman,  Joseph  Pil- 
moor,  Richard  Wright,  George  Shadford,  Thomas 
Webb,  John  King,  Abraham  Whitworth,  and  Jo- 


38  Nation  Builders 

seph  Yearbry.  They  were  at  first  missionaries  to 
the  older  cities  and  centers  of  population.  Pil- 
moor,  Shadford,  Boardman,  Webb,  and  others 
officiated  at  different  times  at  the  old  John  Street 
Church  in  Xew  York,  of  which  we  have  already 
written. 

As  we  have  seen,  it  was  not  until  the  famous 
Christmas  Conference  in  Baltimore,  in  1784,  that 
the  Methodist  Church  was  organized  as  a  separate 
body.  In  the  interval  of  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years  the  few  thousands  of  that  early  communion 
have  increased  to  millions,  the  handful  of  preachers 
has  become  an  army,  and  the  weight  of  their  influ- 
ence has  been  mighty  in  every  important  question 
which  has  come  before  the  American  people.  If 
we  would  understand  the  springs  of  action  that  have 
swayed  whole  sections  of  country  at  particular 
crises  in  our  national  life,  we  must  go  back  to  the 
saddlebag  men  of  Methodism.  To  the  fact  that 
they  rooted  out  the  thistle  and  planted  the  grape 
is  due  that  other  fact  that  in  our  day  grapes  and 
not  thistles  have  been  the  main  har\est. 

No  better  illustration  can  be  given  of  the  hard- 
ships that  beset  the  itinerant  preacher  than  may  be 
found  in  the  unadorned  narrative  of  the  venerable 
Elder  Burke.  Speaking  of  the  circumstances  at- 
tending a  Conference  at  Masterscn's  Station,  in 
Kentucky,  as  early  as  1793,  he  says: 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  39 

"Previous  to  the  meeting  of  the  Conference  we 
raised  a  company  of  twelve  persons  to  proceed  to 
the  seat  of  tlie  Conference,  for  the  purpose  of  guard- 
ing Bishop  Asbury  through  the  wilderness.  We 
met  a  company  at  the  Crab  Orchard,  the  place  we 
usually  met,  by  advertisement  circulated  for  the 
purpose  of  collecting  a  sufficient  number  for  protec- 
tion against  the  Indians. 

"The  company,  when  assembled,  consisted  of 
about  sixty,  all  well  armed.  We  organized  that 
night,  and  I  was  appointed  commander.  In  the 
morning,  all  things  being  in  readiness  for  our  de- 
parture, we  proceeded  through  the  wilderness.  The 
day  previous  there  had  started  a  large  company, 
and  among  the  number  were  four  preachers — two 
Baptists  and  two  Dunkards.  The  company  with 
A\'hom  they  traveled  treated  them  in  such  an  un- 
gentlemanly  and  unchristian  manner  during  the  first 
day  and  night  that  in  the  morning  of  the  second 
day  they  all  four  started  in  advance,  and  had  not 
proceeded  more  than  one  mile  before  they  were  sur- 
prised by  a  party  of  Indians,  and  all  four  killed  and 
scalped,  and  their  horses  and  all  that  they  had  taken 
off  by  the  Indians.  We  camped  the  first  night  not 
far  from  Big  Laurel  River,  and  the  next  morning 
passed  the  spot  where  the  dead  bodies  of  the 
preachers  were  thrown  into  a  sink  hole,  and  cov- 
ered in  part  Avith  some  logs,  and  the  wild  beasts 


40  Nation  Builders 

had  torn  and  mangled  them  in  a  most  shocking 
manner. 

"That  day  we  crossed  the  Cumberland  River,  and 
passed  up  the  narrows  to  Turkey  Creek,  and  camped 
on  the  bank.  I  had  not  slept  on  any  of  the  two 
preceding  nights,  and  that  night  I  intended  to  take 
a  good  sleep.  Accordingly,  after  placing  out  the 
sentinels  and  securing  my  horse,  I  spread  my  saddle 
blankets  and,  with  saddle  and  saddlebags  for  my 
pillow,  laid  me  down  close  to  my  horse,  and  was. 
in  a  few  minutes,  fast  asleep.  It  was  not  an  hour 
before  the  company  were  alarmed.  Some  said  they 
heard  Indians ;  others  affirmed  that  they  heard  them 
cutting  cane  for  their  horses  and  heard  their  dogs 
barking  at  their  camp  up  the  creek ;  and  before  they 
awakened  me  the  greater  part  of  the  company  were 
on  their  horses  and  had  left  the  sentinels  at  their 
posts.  Such  was  the  panic  that  I  immediately  har- 
nessed up  my  horse  and  mounted,  and  had  the 
guards  brought  in.  The  niglit  was  very  dark,  and 
we  had  to  cross  the  creek  immediately.  The  bank 
was  very  steep,  and  wc  had  to  cross  in  Indian  file; 
and  before  all  had  passed  the  bank  became  very 
slippery,  and  the  horses  would  get  nearly  to  the  top 
and  slide  back  into  the  creek  again.  I  was  in  front, 
and  the  word  passed  along  the  line,  'Halt  in  front.' 
At  length  all  got  safely  over,  and  proceeded  about 
four  miles,  to  Cannon  Creek.    The  night  being  very 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  41 

dark,  and  finding  great  difficulty  in  keeping  the 
path,  I  ordered  a  halt,  and  directed  every  man  to 
turn  out  to  the  left  and  dismount  and  hold  his  horse 
by  the  bridle.  They  accordingly  did  so,  and  I  threw 
the  reins  of  my  bridle  over  my  arm  and  laid  down 
at  the  root  of  a  beech  tree  and  was  soon  asleep. 
I  had  previously  given  orders  that  we  should  form 
one  hour  before  daybreak  and  be  on  the  road,  in 
order  to  elude  the  Indians,  should  they  be  in  pursuit 
of  us.  .  .  .  We  crossed  the  Cumberland  Mountains 
early  in  the  morning,  and  that  night  arrived  at 
Bean's  Station,  near  the  Hoi  stein  River,  where  we 
were  met  by  the  intelligence  that  Bishop  Asbury,  in 
consequence  of  ill  health,  could  not  attend  the  Con- 
ference in  Kentucky." 

On  the  return  journey  the  caravan  was  increased 
to  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  by  the  accession 
of  a  large  number  of  immigrants  and  their  pack 
horses.  The  guard  which  had  come  through  to 
escort  the  bishop,  it  was  agreed,  should  bring  up  the 
rear  of  the  procession.  When  they  arrived  at  the 
Cumberland  River  they  found  that  stream  very 
much  swollen,*  and  upon  the  opposite  bank  were  a 
number  of  hostile  Indians.  The  preacher-captain 
called  for  volunteers  to  ford  the  river  with  him,  and 
managed  to  get  eleven  companions,  who  crossed,  the 
savages  retiring  before  them.  The  whole  party  then 
passed  the  river  in  safety,  and,  after  a  number  of 


42  Nation  Builders 

alarms  and  narrow  escapes,  reached  the  Crab  Or- 
chard in  safety,  their  numbers  augmented  by  several 
IMethodist  preachers  who.  at  the  imminent  risk  of 
their  lives,  were  working  their  way  through  tlie 
wilds  to  the  Conference. 

At  that  Conference  ]\Ir.  Burke  received  his  ap- 
pointment to  the  Hinckton  Circuit,  Kentucky.  For 
the  sake  of  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  labors  of 
a  man  of  his  class,  let  us  see  how  far  the  circuit 
extended.  Its  northern  and  eastern  boundaries  con- 
sisted of  the  then  frontier  settlements — the  circuit 
itself  lying  beyond  the  frontier.  On  the  south  ran 
the  Kentucky  River,  and  westward  was  the  great 
Lexington  Circuit.  It  was  called  a  "three  weeks' 
circuit,"  that  meaning  that  a  vigorous  traveler  could 
go  the  rounds  of  its  scattered  clearings  in  that  length 
of  time,  and  it  included  the  three  counties  of  Clarke, 
Boone,  and  Montgomery.  During  the  "summer  of 
Wayne's  campaign"  (against  tlio  Indians)  "great 
numbers  were  out  in  the  service,"  and  Burke  was 
transferred  to  the  Salt  River  Circuit.  That  was  a 
four  weeks'  circuit,  between  four  and  five  hundred 
miles  around,  and  included  Washington,  Nelson, 
Jefferson,  Shelby,  and  Greene  Counties. 

Think  carefully  of  all  that  the  distance  and  the 
time  involved  in  covering  such  a  circuit  implied. 
Once  in  four  weeks  every  settler  in  four  counties 
was   visited   by   the   same   earnest   preacher,   who 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  43 

brought,  besides  his  heavenly  message,  all  of  the 
news  of  the  widely  scattered  members  of  his  parish, 
and  made  the  lonely  individuals  of  his  flock  inter- 
ested participants  in  the  lives  of  some  hundreds  of 
other  people.  What  the  preacher  on  the  Salt  River 
Circuit  or  the  Hinckton  Circuit  was  doing  every 
other  itinerant  in  the  Methodist  connection  was  do- 
ing in  his  appointed  field.  Throughout  the  whole 
borderland  this  agency,  and  this  agency  alone,  was 
laboring  not  only  for  the  spread  of  the  gospel,  but 
for  the  creation  and  the  conservation  of  unity — 
unity  in  thought,  in  spirit,  in  interest. 

Once  in  four  weeks,  twelve  times  in  the  year,  the 
itinerant  on  Salt  River  made  his  round,  an  expected 
and  welcome  guest  at  many  a  cabin,  the  friend  and 
counselor  of  men  and  women,  the  instructor  of  the 
children.  He  learned  to  know  the  woods  and  the 
watercourses,  the  signs  of  fair  weather  or  foul,  the 
cry  of  beast  and  the  note  of  bird,  to  avoid  danger, 
to  endure  hardship,  to  escape  death  by  the  exercise 
of  woodcraft.  He  learned  to  travel  alone  in  a  re- 
gion beset  often  by  warring  Indians  and  yet  keep 
his  scalp,  which  was  a  remarkable  feat  in  those  days. 

After  two  years  spent  amid  the  fatigue  and  perils 
of  this  Indian-infested,  wild-beast-haunted  circuit 
the  staunch  old  warrior  could  remember  only  one 
remarkable  hardship.  He  says :  ''Nothing  worthy  of 
record — except  hard  times.     I  was  reduced  to  the 


44  Nation  Builders 

last  pinch.  My  clothes  were  nearly  all  gone ;  I  had 
patch  upon  patch  and  patch  by  patch,  and  I  received 
only  money  sufficient  to  buy  a  waistcoat,  and  not 
enough  for  the  making,  during  the  two  quarters  I 
remained  on  the  circuit." 

During  the  long  struggle  of  the  colonies  for  in- 
dependence religion  withdrew  unto  the  closet.  If 
it  did  not  languish  in  the  hearts  of  men  it  certainly 
did  not  declare  itself  in  their  stupendous  tasks.  But 
when  the  strife  was  over,  and  the  young  nation 
found  itself  face  to  face  with  measureless  respon- 
sibilities and  untried  duties,  a  new  sense  of  thank- 
fulness and  a  new  ardor  of  patriotism  began  to 
make  themselves  known,  and  gave  an  exaltant  lift 
to  the  ambitions  for  which  freedom  had  opened 
the  way. 

Then  it  was  that  religion  took  up  her  burden 
again,  with  unshackled  arms  and  a  lighter  heart. 
The  war  had  left  its  inevitable  heritage  of  poverty 
and  exhaustion.  The  nation  was  poor,  and  the  ex- 
tinction of  martial  excitement  was  followed  by  the 
usual  reaction,  in  which  carelessness  and  idleness 
were  distressing  elements.  But  over  all  was  the  ex- 
hilaration of  a  great  work  accomplished  and  the 
promise  of  a  great  future  assured. 

All  at  once  measureless  opportunities  were  open- 
ing to  a  hardy  race  that  had  won  its  right  to  govern 
itself,  and  a  new.  clean  continental  vista  unfolded 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  45 

to  the  energies  and  the  ambition  of  peace.  Vast  as 
the  new  field  was,  lying  in  the  unexplored  shadows 
of  the  wilderness,  where  lurked  the  fiercest  of  human 
enemies  and  the  most  formidable  of  natural  foes, 
it  was  nevertheless  unstained  by  any  of  the  iniqui- 
ties that  man  had  instituted  in  the  train  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace. 

Grim  as  the  vista  mav  have  looked  to  the  timid 
eye,  there  were  no  memorials  of  Christian  hatred 
in  it.  No  fagots  had  been  lit  in  its  primeval  depths 
in  the  name  of  Christ,  and  no  dungeons  erected  on 
its  grassy  plateaus  for  the  cause  of  love.  Beasts  of 
prey  and  red-handed  savages  might  dispute  every 
foot  of  the  advance,  but  there  were  no  chartered 
regents  of  the  Most  High  to  burn  and  mangle  for 
the  Saviour's  cause.  The  echoing  spaces  were  desti- 
tute of  all  the  comforts  and  refinements  which  rob 
life  of  its  hardships  and  death  of  many  of  its  terrors, 
but  they  were  also  free  from  the  traditions  of  a 
Henry  VHI,  a  Borgia,  or  a  Torquemada,  to  which 
unAvilling  obeisance  must  be  made.  The  most  nox- 
ious everglades  and  the  most  inhospitable  crags  were 
alike  ignorant  of  the  precedents  of  Dort  or  the  in- 
tolerance of  Westminster,  and  gave  little  heed  to  the 
claims  of  Rome  or  the  mistakes  of  Geneva.  The 
sword  had  cut  the  continuity  and  the  authority  of 
religious  strife,  and,  as  events  proved,  the  couriers 
of  the  faith  were  to  suffer  less  from  cruel  nature 


46  Nation  Builders 

than  they  had  suffered  from  an  overplous  brother- 
hood of  man. 

How  well  the  founders  of  our  commonwealth 
availed  themselves  of  the  priceless  opportunity  we 
now  know,  though  \\q  do  not  perhaps  gi\'e  that 
heed  to  it  which  it  deserves.  They  determined  not 
only  to  open  a  pathway  through  the  wilderness  to 
life  and  love,  but  to  close  the  door  to  religious  strife 
which  lay  behind  them.  They  were  not  only  to 
drive  out  the  enemies  of  the  present,  but  to  put  an 
everlasting  curb  on  the  enemies  of  the  past. 

In  the  conventions  which  met  in  1788  to  ratify 
the  Constitution  we  see  the  religious  men  all  the 
ardent  defenders  of  that  clause  which  says  that  Con- 
gress shall  make  no  law  respecting  the  establishment 
of  religion  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  of  speech 
or  of  the  press.  In  Massachusetts,  where  the  oppo- 
sition to  the  abolishment  of  religious  tests  was  the 
strongest,  its  ablest  defenders  were  clergymen,  and 
it  was  here  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Payson  declared  that 
human  tribunals  for  the  consciences  of  men  were 
an  impious  encroachment  on  the  prerogatives  of 
God. 

The  Constitution  was  adopted  by  seven  states  be- 
fore the  close  of  the  year  1788,  and  went  into  opera- 
tion in  1789.  It  was  thus  that  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  greeted  \\ith  a  new  guarantee,  and  reli- 
gious freedom,  like  a  fresh  beacon,  shed  its  invita- 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  47 

tion  over  the  peaks  of  the  Alleghanies  as  if  a  new 
sunrise  were  hghtening  in  the  west. 

The  states  which  under  a  loose  and  imperfect 
confederation  had  succeeded  in  defeating  Great 
Britain  seemed  in  that  struggle  to  have  exhausted 
their  common  stock  of  vitality,  and  were  like  a  sick 
man  after  a  wearing  fever  has  left  him.  The  alli- 
ance, for  it  was  hardly  more  than  that,  which  had 
brought  the  thirteen  colonies  together  in  a  common 
cause  against  the  crown,  was  utterly  ineffectual  to 
build  a  political  structure  which  should  command 
reverence  at  home  or  respect  abroad.  The  states 
pulled  in  various  directions,  each  one  for  itself,  each 
apparently  trying  to  outvie  the  other  in  preposterous 
legislation  to  remedy  local  embarrassments. 

If  there  was  little  travel,  there  was  less  trade  be- 
tween the  principal  markets  of  the  land.  Never  was 
a  population  of  equal  size  and  intelligence  poorer. 
The  scarcity  of  money  was  so  great  that  the  expedi- 
ent of  barter  in  trade  was  commonly  resorted  to; 
the  condition  of  the  little  coin  in  circulation  so  bad 
that  every  merchant  kept  his  coin  scales  upon  the 
counter.  The  public  treasury  was  as  impoverished 
as  the  private  purse.  At  one  time  the  national  treas- 
ury was  absolutely  without  a  dollar.  Abroad,  it 
was  impossible  to  raise  loans,  except  from  the  Jews 
at  exorbitant  rates  of  interest.  Robert  Morris,  who 
had  spent  his  large  private  fortune  for  his  country's 


48  Nation  Builders 

aid,  actually  drew  upon  the  American  ambassadors 
abroad  for  money,  sold  the  drafts  for  cash  with 
which  to  run  the  machinery  of  the  government,  and 
left  the  luckless  ministers  in  France  or  Holland  to 
scrape  together  by  hook  or  crook  the  loans  which 
would  keep  them  from  being  dishonored.  American 
credit  was  the  laughingstock  of  the  world.  Protec- 
tion for  American  citizens  abroad  was  absolutely 
unknown. 

Under  such  conditions  it  is  not  hard  to  understand 
that  there  was  little  or  no  union  sentiment  among 
the  people.  A  man  rarely  went  outside  his  own 
state;  knew  nothing  about  the  man  across  the  bor- 
der, except  to  distrust  him.  The  Union  as  we  know 
it  was  not  born  yet.  Tlic  war  wliich  was  ended 
was  a  war  for  liberty,  but  it  was  for  the  liberty  of 
each  separate  colony,  Ijanded  together  only  because 
not  one  could  have  made  any  effectual  struggle  alone. 
The  war  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  in  which 
a  population  was  willing  to  lay  down  its  life  for  a 
loyal  idea,  was  tlic  culminating  act  of  a  faith  that 
lirid  only  begun  to  germinate  three  quarters  of  a 
century  before. 

yVmong  communities  which  did  not  travel  the 
■Methodist  itinerants  came  and  went.  To  people 
isolated  through  vast  agricultural  regions  and  scat- 
tered in  frontier  settlements  they  formed  almost  the 
sole  cementing  bond.     To  the  men  who  could  not 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  49 

see  across  their  hill  ranges  and  over  their  forests 
they  taught  the  tenets  of  a  universal  brotherhood. 
They  gathered  the  population  of  a  country  in  camp 
meetings  and  collected  a  congress  of  representatives 
from  remote  states  in  Conferences.  More  than  any 
other  agency,  more  than  the  political  candidate,  the 
officer  of  the  government,  or  the  occasional  school- 
master, the  Methodist  preachers  leavened  the  lump 
with  democracy.  They  alone  went  everywhere, 
penetrated  to  every  remotest  hamlet,  every  ultimate 
cabin  in  the  mountains,  and,  like  the  wandering  pil- 
grims of  mediaeval  times,  were  the  news  carriers,  the 
idea  mongers  of  their  day.  More  than  any  other  class 
of  men  in  the  New  World  the  itinerant  preachers 
of  Methodism  were  propagandists  of  the  democratic 
idea.  The  very  form  of  religion  which  they  pro- 
fessed was  democratic  in  its  origin  and  tendency, 
if  not  in  its  form  of  government.  The  importance 
of  the  individual  and  the  claim  of  the  community 
were  everywhere  insisted  upon.  In  practical  work- 
ing the  religious  government  was  from  the  class  to 
the  circuit  and  from  the  circuit  to  the  Conference. 

From  the  Eastern  centers  of  civilization  and 
thought  to  the  farthest  confines  of  the  then  Western 
country,  from  Baltimore  to  Canada,  from  Philadel- 
phia to  the  extreme  frontier  hamlets  of  Ohio  and 
Indiana,  it  was  the  tireless  Methodist  preacher  who 
carried  with  his  message  of  gospel  freedom  the  lat- 


50  Nation  Builders 

est  proclamation  of  civil  liberty.  Over  many  hun- 
dreds of  miles  of  the  new  country  he  alone  kept  the 
men  of  the  Kentucky  clearings  and  the  Tennessee 
mountains,  of  farm  and  forest  and  valley,  in  touch 
with  the  cities  of  the  seaboard.  From  his  Confer- 
ences he  not  only  took  back  to  his  field  of  labor  the 
counsels  and  experiences  of  his  co-religionists,  but 
also  the  echoes  of  strenuous  words  and  the  acts  of 
a  struggling  Congress.  With  the  theology  of  Saint 
Paul  and  Saint  John  went  hand  in  hand  the  political 
principles  of  Hamilton  and  Madison.  The  same 
men  who  carried  the  Bible  into  the  wilderness  car- 
ried the  Federalist  also. 

The  only  libraries  for  a  large  portion  of  the  people 
of  rural  America  were  the  books  in  the  packs  of  the 
Methodist  parsons.  The  only  professors  of  political 
economy  were  the  professors  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

An  old  Methodist  minister  once  preached  a 
Thanksgiving  sermon  in  which  he  said :  "We  back- 
woods people  ought  to  thank  God  most  heartily  for 
two  things,  namely,  the  Indians  and  the  Methodist 
preachers.  For  in  the  settlement  of  this  great  coun- 
try the  Indians  kept  the  white  population  from  scat- 
tering into  clans  and  taking  possession  of  certain 
districts  of  country,  claiming  them  and  forming 
governments  of  their  own — thus  confining  them  to 
the  government:  of  the  country.    While  the  waves  of 


Along  a  Blazed  Trail  51 

population  rolled  out  westward,  the  Indians  rolled 
them  back  again  and  kept  them  together.  Then  the 
itinerant  Methodist  preachers,  in  the  true  spirit  of 
their  Master,  followed  up  the  emigrants  from  block- 
house to  blockhouse  and  from  cabin  to  cabin." 

This  is  possibly  the  only  occasion  on  record  when 
one  who  had  been  acquainted  with  the  dangers  of 
frontier  life  found  reason  to  thank  his  Maker  for 
the  Indians,  but  the  argument  used  is  worth  consid- 
eration. We  may  be  sure  that  the  divine  destiny 
that  shaped  the  ends  of  the  republic  bent  all  agencies 
to  that  result  which  we  of  to-day  sum  up  in  one 
phrase — the  Union. 


CHAPTER  III 
The  Field 

The  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  saw 
the  formation  in  America  of  numberless  land  com- 
panies, some  of  them  organized  with  statesmanlike 
purpose  to  people  new  lands  and  increase  the  boun- 
daries of  the  new  republic,  others  to  further  the 
financial  fortunes  of  less  patriotic  speculators,  but 
all  tending  toward  the  same  general  result — the  peo- 
pling of  the  new  lands  that  were  then  known  as 
the  West. 

It  is  hard  to  realize  at  this  day  the  diversity  of 
the  conditions  under  which  pioneer  settlers  pushed 
forward  into  the  wild  land  beyond  the  inhabited 
borders  of  the  thirteen  original  states.  The  first  to 
advance — the  skirmish  line,  as  it  were — consisted 
of  lonely  adventurers,  generally  single  men,  trap- 
pers and  hunters,  who  fulfilled  their  mission,  died, 
and  were  forgotten.  They  were  the  ephemera  of 
population,  leaves  fluttering  before  the  breeze,  straws 
floating  on  the  edge  of  the  tide.  They  sometimes 
made  discoveries  and  opened  new  patlis.  They  not 
infrequently  allied  themselves  with  the  savages  and 
U-ft  a  progeny  of  lialf-brecd  children.   But  they  rarely 


The  Field  53 

became  permanent  factors  in  the  problem  of  settle- 
ment. The  second  class,  closely  following  these 
forerunners  of  population,  were  divided  between 
those  who  may  be  called  free  agents,  making  choice 
of  a  home  beyond  the  borders  of  civilization, 
partly  no  doubt  through  the  influence  of  an  indefi- 
nite popular  fever  for  emigration,  and  those  who 
were  persuaded  by  land  agents  to  a  step  of  which 
they  could  not  measure  the  magnitude. 

The  scheme  of  Rufus  Putnam  and  others  threw 
many  Revolutionary  veterans  into  Ohio.  Private 
land  enterprises  decreased  the  population  of  Vir- 
ginia and  other  states.  Political  sentiment  and  dis- 
content stripped  North  Carolina  of  her  surplus  pop- 
ulation. New  York  sent  out  hordes,  so  that  an 
Albany  correspondent  to  a  New  York  paper  at  that 
time  wrote  of  a  constant  stream  of  people,  an  end- 
less caravan,  moving  through  that  city  westward. 
A  census  taker  in  Kentucky  in  1790  showed  a  popu- 
lation of  over  seventy  thousand,  and  numbered  in 
the  region  between  the  Ohio  and  the  Great  Lakes, 
west  of  the  Pennsylvania  line,  about  four  thousand 
souls.  The  next  census,  taken  ten  years  later,  gave 
forty-five  thousand  to  Ohio  alone,  and  above  two 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  to  Kentucky.  Be- 
tween 1790  and  1800  the  contagious  fever  of  emi- 
gration from  the  seaboard  states  became  almost  a 
delirium.     Men  disposed  of  whatever  they  owned 


54  Nation  Builders 

to  raise  the  money  necessary  to  move  with  their  fam- 
ilies westward,  into  regions  that  were  painted  to 
the  imagination  with  every  ahuring  color,  but  which 
lost  many  supernal  attractions  upon  a  closer  view. 
In  a  single  decade,  we  are  told  by  statisticians,  the 
center  of  population  in  the  United  States  moved 
westward  forty-one  miles.  The  majority  of  the  ear- 
liest settlers  in  Tennessee  came  from  North  Carolina. 
There  were  a  few  straggling  forerunners,  whose 
status  can  hardly  be  accounted  that  of  actual  settlers, 
wdio  drifted  into  the  woods  in  advance  of  the  tide  of 
immigration  that  was  soon  to  rise. 

The  cabin  that  William  Bean  built  upon  the  Wa- 
tauga in  1769,  where  a  year  later  James  ^^'atson  and 
others  joined  him,  has  been  put  down  as  the  first 
bona  fide  settlement.  Within  the  next  year  another 
company  built  a  few  huts  near  Rogcrsville,  and 
about  the  same  time  the  first  store  west  of  the  Cum- 
berland Mountains  was  opened,  on  the  Nollichucky, 
by  Jacob  Brown.  Following  these  initial  attempts 
at  colonization  a  number  of  North  Carolinians 
planted  themselves  upon  what  they  at  first  supposed 
to  be  Virginia  soil,  but,  finding  that  the  territory 
belonged  to  North  Carolina,  they  formed  an  alli- 
ance with  the  other  settlements,  under  the  name  of 
I  he  Watauga  Association.  It  was  a  confederation 
for  protective  purposes,  and  survived  several  years. 

To  Colonel  Richard  Ikiidci  m'U.  who  took  up  land 


The  Field  55 

between  the  Cumberland  and  Kentucky  Rivers  in 
1775,  is  due  a  larger  plan  of  government  than  any 
contemplated  by  the  W^atauga  x^ssociation.  A  num- 
ber of  settlers,  induced  by  Colonel  Henderson's  rep- 
resentations to  follow  him,  built  their  cabins  in  that 
part  of  the  country,  and  between  them  and  the  com- 
panies of  James  Robertson  a  compact  of  government 
was  drawn  up.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  such  a  com- 
pact was  of  the  crudest  and  loosest  construction. 
If  any  measures  facilitating  the  operation  of  courts 
of  law  were  contemplated,  or  any  means  to  secure 
the  administration  of  justice,  the  provisions  made 
for  their  operation  generall}^  proved  inadequate,  in 
the  face  of  the  conditions  of  backwoods  life.  In  the 
towns  there  may  have  been  some  slight  attempt  to 
enforce  them,  but  for  years  the  very  meaning  of  the 
terms  "law"  and  "order"  were  forgotten  by  the  men 
of  the  border. 

In  spite  of  the  dangers  to  which  the  frontiersmen 
were  exposed  the  majority  occupied  lonely  cabins 
in  the  woods,  though  through  that  section  of  coun- 
try which  borders  the  Cumberland  River  the  excess- 
ive and  pertinacious  hostility  of  the  Creek  Indians 
made  settlement  life  much  more  common  than  upon 
some  other  parts  of  the  frontier.  Along  the  Cum- 
berland bluffs  there  was  a  series  of  small  villages, 
with  the  cabins  of  isolated  families  scattered  behind 
them  through  the  border  of  the  timber  land.     The 


56  Nation  Builders 

death  rate  from  the  knives  and  tomahawks  of  the 
savages  was  frightful.  "No  man  dared  to  fell  a 
tree,  to  plant  an  acre  of  corn,  to  pick  a  berry  from 
a  bush,  to  go  to  the  nearest  spring  for  water,  or 
even  to  sit  in  the  shade  of  his  own  cabin,  but  his 
gun  and  powderhorn  were  ready  l^eside  him.  In 
1787  thirty-three  men  were  killed  by  Indians  within 
seven  miles  of  Nashville." 

At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  Nashville 
was  the  largest  and  most  important  city  in  Tennes- 
see, though  its  claims  to  rank  as  a  metropolis  rested 
upon  a  couple  of  hundred  log  cabins,  many  of  them 
floorless,  with  unglazed  windows  and  clapboarded 
roofs.  Besides  these  dwellings  there  were  a  court 
house,  a  jail,  and  several  public  houses.  Beyond 
Nashville  there  was  nothing  to  the  west,  nothing 
northward  short  of  the  Kentucky  border,  nothing- 
eastward  except  a  little  chain  of  equally  crazy  set- 
tlements on  the  Cumberland,  or  the  hamlet  of  Knox- 
ville,  distant  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  as 
the  crow  flies,  but  fifteen  days  away  in  time. 
To  reach  it  from  Nashville  men  usually  traveled 
well  armed  and  in  bands  large  enough  to  make  head 
against  the  hostile  Indians  with  which  the  country 
swarmed. 

An  advertisement  in  the  North  Carolina  State 
Gazette  announced  in  November,  1788,  the  comple- 
tion of  a  road  cut  through  the  forest  from  Camp- 


The  Field  57 

bell's  Station  to  Nashville,  and  the  attendance  of 
a  guard  to  escort  those  who  wished  to  travel  to 
the  latter  place.  It  was  further  announced  that  the 
guard  would  again  be  in  attendance  at  the  same  place 
a  year  later. 

Under  the  leadership  of  such  men  as  John  Sevier, 
long  known  as  Nollichucky  Jack,  the  men  of  the 
Carolina  outposts  that  subsequently  contributed  to 
form  the  state  of  Tennessee  not  only  held  their  own 
against  the  Indians,  but  actually  made  headway  at 
an  astonishing  rate.  Before  there  was  any  estab- 
lished court  in  that  territory,  except  in  one  or  two 
of  the  principal  settlements,  there  began  to  be  dis- 
putes concerning  property,  and  Nashville  presented 
a  field  for  lawyers  before  the  mud  was  dry  in  the 
chinks  of  its  log  huts.  One  of  the  early  lights  of 
that  frontier  was  the  young  Andrew  Jackson,  who 
took  his  first  lessons  in  warcraft  from  the  Indian 
fighters  of  the  Cumberland. 

In  1 79 1  the  crushing  defeat  of  Saint  Clair  by  the 
Indians  under  Joseph  Brent  spread  terror  through 
the  whole  Western  country.  In  Ohio,  Tennessee, 
Kentucky,  western  Pennsylvania,  and  wherever  in 
the  wilds  the  foot  of  a  white  man  had  trod,  there 
was  panic  at  the  dreadful  tale  of  atrocities,  that  in 
some  mysterious  way  was  circulated  even  to  the 
remotest  fastnesses  of  the  forest. 

To  a  preacher  crossing  the  Cumberland  range  to 


58  Nation  Builders 

penetrate  the  promised  land  lying  to  the  west  of 
them  there  was  always  an  immediate  prospect  of 
hardships  and  dangers,  of  some  of  which  we  are  not 
ignorant,  even  at  this  distance  of  time.  First  of  all, 
there  was  the  ever-present  peril  from  the  Indians. 
It  was  an  old  saying  that  the  Creeks  were  always 
upon  the  warpath,  and,  indeed,  that  statement  hardly 
exceeded  the  truth.  Through  the  forest  to  Knox- 
ville,  and  beyond  that  embryo  city  to  the  more  dis- 
tant Cumberland  lands,  there  was  a  well-marked 
trail,  emphasized  upon  more  than  one  occasion  by 
the  passage  of  troops  sent  to  deal  with  the  savages, 
and  traveled  almost  constantly  in  the  autumn  by 
bands  of  immigrants.  Yet  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  trail  was  a  highway  for  the  annual  passage  of 
hundreds  of  people,  it  was  a  lonely  and  dangerous 
path,  beset  by  every  peril  to  which  travelers  in  an 
American  wilderness  could  be  subjected.  It  bor- 
dered, if,  indeed,  it  did  not  trespass  upon,  the  res- 
ervation which  even  at  that  early  day  our  govern- 
ment guaranteed  to  the  Indians.  It  led  through  low 
lands  where  there  were  no  streams,  and  through 
forests  where  panthers  and  wolves  abounded.  The 
way  was  long  and  arduous,  but  it  was  also  one  of 
exceeding  natural  beauty,  and  even  its  very  ruggcd- 
ness  must  have  spoken  to  the  awakened  mind  of 
a  traveling  preacher  of  the  sublimity  of  the  Creator's 
handiwork. 


The  Field  59 

In  another  chapter  of  this  book  reference  is  made 
to  a  rendezvous  of  preachers  at  the  Crab  Orchard, 
where  they  united  to  form  an  escort  for  Bishop 
Asbury,  then  expected  to  travel  westward.  That 
famous  spot  has  been  described  in  the  journal  of 
an  English  traveler  of  that  day  in  the  following 
words : 

"It  is  a  fine,  large  plain,  or  natural  meadow,  con- 
taining many  hundred  acres,  and  covered  through- 
out its  whole  extent  with  a  tall,  rich  grass,  sur- 
rounded on  every  side  by  the  neighboring  mountains, 
and  watered  with  several  fine  springs,  which  flow 
from  one  end  to  the  other.  The  scenery  of  the 
craggy  mountains,  covered  with  trees  to  their  very 
top,  contrasted  with  the  smooth  level  of  the  plain, 
afforded  us  a  view  highly  picturesque,  novel,  and 
enchanting,  and  one  which  we  could  not  dwell  on 
but  with  pleasure.  Near  one  end  of  it  and  not  far 
from  the  road  is  a  very  great  natural  curiosity.  It 
is  a  subterraneous  cavity  in  a  rock  under  the  moun- 
tains, down  which  you  descend  by  some  steps  cut 
in  the  stone  into  a  large,  spacious  room,  through 
which  runs  a  clear,  limpid  stream  of  water,  which 
rises  from  the  rock  at  one  end  and  flows  out  at 
the  other  through  a  passage  underground,  and  dis- 
gorges itself  in  the  open  air  not  far  from  the  en- 
trance to  the  cave." 

The  whole  of  the  way  was  full  of  surprises,  and  to 


6o  Nation  Builders 

a  poetic  or  imaginative  traveler  must  have  afforded 
no  little  satisfaction;  but  its  distressing  features 
would  prevent  a  too  great  absorption  in  its  beauties. 
Not  only  were  the  Indians  dangerous,  but  the  newly- 
established  white  inhabitants,  when  they  could  be 
found,  were  generally  inhospitable  and  poor.  It 
was  no  uncommon  experience  for  a  preacher  to  ar- 
rive at  a  cabin  tired  and  hungry,  after  twenty  or 
thirty  miles  of  travel,  or  perhaps  a  night  spent  with- 
out shelter  in  the  woods,  and  be  told  that  the  family 
had  not  enough  for  themselves  and  could  not  give 
to  strangers.  If  hospitality  was  ever  shown  it  was 
to  a  neighbor,  whose  good  will  might  be  worth  hav- 
ing, but  the  wayfarer  must  not  expect  favors.  Food 
was  seldom  given  away  until  the  preachers  had 
gained  something  of  a  foothold  in  the  country. 
When  one  had  money  or  other  equivalent  to  offer 
he  might  hope  for  pork  and  beans,  hominy  and 
bacon,  or  cornbread ;  beyond  this  the  larder  was 
usually  empty  save  for  what  the  forest  provided. 
Many  a  preacher  has  recorded  a  repulse  at  this  or 
that  cabin  in  the  wilderness,  when  he  was  obliged  to 
lie  down,  hungry  and  thirsty,  under  a  tree  in  the 
forest,  and  commit  himself  to  the  care  of  Him  whose 
servant  he  was. 

A  lodging  in  a  Tennessee  or  Kentucky  cabin, 
even  when  obtained,  was  not  a  thing  to  be  coveted 
by  fastidious  people.    A  pile  of  husks  without  a  bed- 


The  Field  6i 

stead,  in  a  room  occupied  by  half  a  dozen  other 
people,  on  a  floor  of  rough  slabs  so  loosely  placed 
that  snakes  not  infrequently  came  up  between  and 
slept  with  the  family,  was  all  that  a  traveler  usually 
dared  to  hope  for.  At  the  very  rare  houses  of  pub- 
lic entertainment  that  were  by  courtesy  called  inns 
it  was  customary  to  put  a  number  of  beds  in  one 
room,  and  if  they  were  all  full  a  newcomer  might, 
according  to  a  custom  of  the  country,  bunk  with  any 
one  of  the  occupants  he  might  choose,  waiving  the 
formality  of  an  introduction.  For  such  a  lodging 
and  a  breakfast,  such  as  a  New  England  housekeeper 
would  blush  to  offer  to  a  tramp,  a  not  unusual  charge 
was  a  dollar.  From  such  accounts  as  we  have  it 
would  seem  that  the  people  of  that  region,  though 
brave  and  persevering,  were  selfish  and  sordid,  till 
awakened  by  a  spiritual  experience. 

The  marvelous  persistence  of  the  Methodist 
preachers  was  exemplified  in  every  clearing  in  the 
frontier  woods,  and  the  spiritual  experience  which 
alone  could  have  worked  a  reformation  in  the 
habits  of  life  and  thought  of  the  people  and  sub- 
ordinated their  sordid  anxiety  to  the  splendid  reality 
of  a  triumphant  faith,  was  due  to  the  ceaseless  en- 
ergy, the  tireless  patience,  with  which  the  itinerants 
went,  almost  as  mendicants,  but  full  of  beneficent 
purpose,  from  clearing  to  clearing,  till  the  gospel 
was  preached  to  every  creature. 


62  Nation  Builders 

Along  the  Ohio  River  near  the  close  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  the  settlements  were  as  few  as  upon 
the  Cumberland,  and  they  were  in  as  poor  and  as 
dangerous  condition.  Wheeling,  with  fifty  log 
cabins,  Marietta,  with  two  hundred,  and  a  few. 
smaller  groups  of  humanity,  were  all  that  lay  be- 
yond Pittsburg,  from  which  point  voyagers,  well 
armed,  trusted  themselves  with  their  families  in 
clumsy  boats  to  the  current  of  the  river,  and  pre- 
pared for  a  running  fight  with  the  fierce  and  crafty 
foes  that  at  certain  points  along  the  shore  were  very 
sure  to  oppose  their  passage.  There  were  several 
sorts  of  craft  used  by  the  Ohio  River  pioneers,  the 
principal  ones  being  flatboats,  keel  boats,  and  arks, 
the  latter  roofed  in  a  fashion  not  unlike  the  popular 
conception  of  the  ark  in  which  the  sur^^ivors  of  the 
Noachian  deluge  came  safe  to  land.  Such  vessels, 
when  laden  with  the  women  and  children  and  the 
property  and  provisions  of  immigrants  setting  out 
for  frontier  homes,  generally  sailed  in  consort  with 
others  of  their  kind.  Provided  with  strong  slab 
bulwarks,  they  were  practically  floating  forts,  from 
which  the  long  rifles  of  their  defenders  might  be 
used  with  deadly  effect.  Their  steering  apparatus 
consisted  of  sweeps  projecting  astern,  and  suggest- 
ing the  steering  board  of  the  ancient  Norse  galleys. 
These  flotillas,  long  remembered  upon  the  Ohio, 
were  as  distinctive  as  the  wagon,  called  a  prairie 


The  Field  63 

schooner,  which  came  into  use  upon  the  plains  of 
the  farther  West  nearly  a  generation  later. 

The  woods  and  marshes  that  bordered  the  river 
abounded  with  game.  The  last  of  the  buffalo  were 
disappearing  from  that  part  of  the  country  when 
the  first  rank  of  settlers  came  in.  This  fact  should 
be  noticed  as  evidence  that  in  at  least  one  instance 
the  decline  of  the  bison  was  not  due  to  the  wasteful 
energy  of  white  hunters.  Everywhere  wild  turkey, 
deer,  elk,  and  bear  were  common,  while  the  waters 
of  the  river  teemed  with  palatable  fish. 

Those  voyages  in  company  must  have  been  won- 
derful, rememberable  experiences.  The  life  of 
almost  complete  idleness,  enjoyed  by  men  to  whom 
tradition  attributes  wonderful  qualities  of  courage 
and  hardiness,  to  match  their  unrivaled  stature  and 
strength,  but  imputes  also  such  vices  as  laziness  and 
a  love  for  strong  drink,  was  varied  by  adventures 
which  in  another  age  and  country  would  have  been 
celebrated  in  heroic  stanzas.  The  women,  chatting 
together,  or  occupied  with  those  domestic  cares  that 
were  not  to  be  intermitted  even  upon  such  a  jour- 
ney, and  the  children,  living  in  a  real  wonder-world 
of  which  they  could  not  guess  the  extent  or  the 
value,  were  making  the  most  of  an  experience  that 
would  probably  never  be  repeated. 

Limestone,  Columbia,  and  Newport  were  started 
— mere  clusters  of  log  huts.    Cincinnati  was  a  prom- 


64  Nation  Builders 

ise  of  something  metropolitan,  Louisville  a  place 
for  carousals.  There  it  happened  that  when  Samuel 
S.  Forman  set  up  a  store  opposite  the  slab  tavern, 
and  greatly  surprised  his  neighbors  by  shutting  up 
shop  on  Sunday,  some  one  expostulated  with  him, 
on  the  ground  that  Sunday  had  not  come  over  the 
mountains. 

"O  yes  it  has,"  answered  Forman,  cheerfully, 
"I  brought  it." 

Near  the  mouth  of  the  Scioto  River  the  Indians 
had  a  cave  where  they  made  their  rendezvous  when 
preparing  for  an  attack  upon  a  party  of  immigrants, 
and  the  evil  fame  of  this  place  spread  throughout 
all  the  frontier. 

After  the  flatboats  and  arks  had  reached  their 
several  destinations  and  the  voyagers  parted  to 
establish  their  separate  homes,  the  memory  of  that 
brief  social  experience  and  the  moving  panorama 
of  the  country  through  which  they  had  passed  must 
have  remained  long  with  them,  and  even  brightened 
by  contrast  the  loneliness  of  their  lives.  Into  a 
world  to  which  ideas  never  came,  where  news  sel- 
dom visited  them,  where  the  realities  of  life  were 
nearly  all  hard,  cruel,  and  exceedingly  bitter,  a  world 
where  terror  and  calamity  were  almost  the  only 
relief  from  an  appalling  monotony,  the  exiles  of  a 
century  ago  dropi)ed  and  were  lost  to  sight. 

Most  of  the  pioneers  came  not  from  the  centers 


The  Field  65 

of  population,  where  alone  at  that  day  the  facilities 
for  education  could  be  enjoyed.  They  had  always 
lived  near  the  border  of  the  world.  Finally  they 
went  over  that  border.  They  were  not  generally 
people  who  had  within  themselves  those  resources 
which  might  enable  a  family  possessing  them  to 
endure  a  Selkirk  existence  without  repining.  They 
had  what  was  perhaps  a  much  better  equipment  for 
the  work  designed  by  Providence  for  them — that 
is,  a  store  of  superabundant  physical  vitality.  Yet 
we  cannot  but  believe  that  the  lives  of  the  pioneer 
w^omen  of  America  must  have  been  purgatorial. 

The  lawlessness  of  the  Kentucky  pioneer  was  so 
proverbial  that  the  very  term  "Kentuck"  was  a  syn- 
onym for  all  manner  of  deviltry.  The  Kentucky 
boatmen,  we  are  told,  were  a  class  almost  as  greatly 
feared  as  the  Indians.  Their  life  was  a  savage  alter- 
nation of  displays  of  great  physical  strength  and 
endurance  and  the  most  bestial  debaucheries.  Mod- 
ern parallels  to  their  mode  of  life  may  be  found  in 
the  Western  mining  camps  of  the  forties  or  among 
the  ranches  of  a  latter  day.  In  those  days  they  were 
unmatched  except  by  the  teamsters  of  the  Tennessee 
woods.  It  would  be  erroneous  and  wrong  to  picture 
the  pioneer  of  that  time  as  devoid  of  all  Christian 
theory  or  practice,  but  it  was  at  least  like  the  leaven 
hidden  in  a  measure  of  meal,  and  its  working  had 
not  commenced.    There  were  undoubtedly  members 


66  Nation  Builders 

of  different  Christian  denominations  in  Knoxville, 
Nashville,  Cincinnati,  and  other  prominent  settle- 
ments at  a  very  early  day.  These  were  mostly  Pres- 
byterians, Baptists,  and  Methodists,  their  church 
affiliations  depending  largely  upon  the  part  of  the 
East  from  which  they  had  come  out.  These  Chris- 
tian people  sometimes  formed  small  congregations 
and  were  ministered  to  by  preachers  who  were  ani- 
mated by  a  holy  zeal.  The  Methodists  alone  formed 
circuits  outside  of  the  centers  of  population  and 
visited  for  religious  purposes  with  anything  like 
regularity  the  outlying  cabins  and  plantations  that 
increased  by  the  thousands  every  twelvemonth. 

Kentucky,  which  had  gained  the  nickname  of 
"Satan's  Stronghold,"  became  the  object  of  especial 
solicitude  to  the  preachers  of  Methodism.  In  Ken- 
tucky commenced  the  visible  work  of  revival  that 
soon  was  to  assume  a  magnitude  unparalleled  in  the 
history  of  modern  religious  movements,  and  unex- 
celled for  force  and  potency  even  in  the  days  when 
Peter  the  Hermit  carried  his  enthusiasm  like  a  fire- 
brand through  the  towns  and  hamlets  of  Europe, 
preaching  a  crusade  for  the  recovery  of  the  Holy 
City.  Of  the  Red  River  revival  John  Bach  Mc- 
Master  makes  this  significant  note : 

"Two  young  men  began  the  great  work  in  the 
summer  of  1799.  They  were  brothers,  preachers, 
and  on  their  way  across  the  pine  barrens  to  Ohio^ 


The  Field  67 

but  turned  aside  to  be  present  at  a  sacramental 
solemnity  on  Red  River.  The  people  were  accus- 
tomed to  gather  at  such  times  on  a  Friday,  and  by 
praying,  singing,  and  hearing  sermons  prepare  them- 
selves for  the  reception  of  the  sacrament  on  Sun- 
day. At  the  Red  River  meeting  the  brothers  were 
asked  to  preach,  and  one  did  so  with  astonishing 
fervor.  As  he  spoke  the  people  were  deeply  moved, 
tears  ran  streaming  down  their  faces,  and  one,  a 
woman,  far  in  the  rear  of  the  house,  broke  through 
order  and  began  to  shout.  For  two  hours  after  the 
regular  preachers  had  gone  the  crowd  lingered  and 
were  loath  to  depart.  While  they  tarried  one  of  the 
brothers  was  irresistibly  impelled  to  speak.  He 
rose  and  told  them  that  he  felt  called  to  preach; 
that  he  could  not  be  silent.  The  words  which  then 
fell  from  his  lips  roused  the  people  before  him  to 
*a  pungent  sense  of  sin.'  Again  and  again  the 
woman  shouted,  and  would  not  be  silent.  He  started 
to  go  to  her.  The  crowd  begged  him  to  turn  back. 
Something  within  him  urged  him  on,  and  he  went 
through  the  house  shouting  and  exhorting  and  prais- 
ing God.  In  a  moment  the  floor,  to  use  his  own 
words,  *was  covered  with  the  slain.'  Their  cries  for 
mercy  were  terrible  to  hear.  Some  found  forgive- 
ness, but  many  went  away  'spiritually  wounded' 
and  suffering  unutterable  agony  of  soul.  Nothing 
could  allay  the  excitement.    Every  settlement  along 


68  Nation  Builders 

the  Green  River  and  the  Cumberland  was  full  of 
religious  fervor.  Men  fitted  their  wagons  with  beds 
and  provisions  and  traveled  fifty  miles  to  camp  upon 
the  ground  and  hear  him  preach.  The  idea  was 
new.  Hundreds  adopted  it,  and  camp  meetings  be- 
gan. There  was  now  no  longer  any  excuse  to  stay 
away  from  preaching.  Neither  distance  nor  lack  of 
houses  nor  scarcity  of  food  nor  daily  occupations 
prevailed." 

In  a  succeeding  chapter  we  will  dwell  more  par- 
ticularly upon  the  events  here  described. 

The  settlement  of  Ohio  and  Indiana  differed 
somewhat  from  that  of  the  region  we  have  been  par- 
ticularly considering. 

During  the  entire  period  of  national  life  in  the 
United  States  few  subjects  that  have  claimed  the 
attention  of  Congress  have  proved  more  provocative 
of  discussion  than  the  disposal  of  undefined,  or  ill 
defined.  Western  territory.  From  Virginia,  that 
claimed  vast  tracts  of  land  beyond  the  Ohio,  to 
Maryland,  stoutly  refusing  to  join  the  first  confed- 
eration of  states  till  a  settlement  on  that  head  had 
been  reached,  tiic  representatives  of  the  thirteen 
embryo  states  represented  almost  as  many  shades  of 
political  opinion.  New  York  broke  the  deadlock 
which  was  the  result  of  that  discussion  by  a  proposi- 
tion to  cede  the  Western  land  claimed  by  her  to  the 
federal  government,  under  certain  restrictions  and 


The  Field  69 

subject  to  certain  conditions  and  reservations. 
Other  states  subsequently  fell  in  line.  In  October, 
1780,  Congress  agreed  to  dispose  of  all  lands  so 
ceded  for  the  common  advantage. 

We  may  be  permitted  to  go  back  to  a  still  earlier 
period  in  order  to  understand  the  conditions  pre- 
ceding and  partly  influencing  the  occupation  of  the 
Northwest  by  English-speaking  immigrants.  The 
first  actual  settlers  of  that  part  of  the  country  that 
is  now  Indiana  were  Frenchmen,  whose  life  was 
a  free,  irresponsible,  reckless,  half-savage  existence. 
Their  means  of  subsistence  were  such  as  satisfied 
their  Indian  neighbors.  There  was  neither  tillage 
nor  manufacture.  The  few  posts  or  settlements 
were  mainly  along  the  Wabash  or  its  tributaries,  at 
Vincennes,  Kaskaskia,  Ouitanon,  and  several  other 
points.  The  business  of  the  inhabitants  being  hunt- 
ing and  kindred  occupations,  their  trade  staples  were 
hides,  pelts,  tallow,  and  beeswax,  in  which  commod- 
ities they,  through  their  factors  or  agents,  did  quite 
a  thriving  business  as  early  as  1735  or  1740.  They 
lived  contentedly  under  commandants,  as  their  gov- 
ernors were  called,  and  looked  up  to  such  exalted 
personages  as  'Sieur  de  Vincennes,  or  Jean  Saint 
Ange  de  Belle  Rive,  as  of  quite  another  clay  from 
common  mortals. 

The  first  French  comers  laid  claim  to  all  the 
Mississippi  valley  and  the  broad  belt  of  country 


70  Nation  Builders 

watered  by  its  tributaries,  and  their  explorers,  as 
well  as  the  more  far-seeing  of  the  French  states- 
men of  the  day,  dreamed  of  empire — a  dream  that 
might  have  been  realized  had  the  territory  possessed 
a  seacoast.  The  lives  of  the  people  were  under  the 
domination  of  courtiers  and  favorites,  ambitious 
adventurers,  and  self-sacrificing  priests  of  the  Rom- 
ish Church. 

English  dominion  over  the  region  referred  to 
commenced  with  Wolfe's  victory  over  Montcalm, 
a  victory  which  the  late  Professor  John  Fiske  char- 
acterizes as  "the  greatest  turning  point  yet  discov- 
erable in  modern  history."  It  was  the  decisive  an- 
swer to  the  question  whether  French  or  English 
ideas  and  institutions  should  govern  the  destinies 
of  the  North  American  continent.  When  Saint 
Ange  evacuated  Vincennes  he  closed  the  chapter 
of  French  imperialism,  picturesque  indolence,  and 
ignorance,  and  priestly  domination.  Admirable  in 
their  courage,  devotion,  and  faith  as  the  missionary 
priests  were,  it  is  doubtful  if  they  would  ever  have 
stimulated  their  roving  parishioners  to  clear  think- 
ing or  effective  living. 

The  English  settlers  who  followed  on  the  heels 
of  the  French  were  harder,  coarser  in  the  grain, 
more  practical,  less  picturesque.  The  gayeties  of 
the  frontier  villages  gave  place  somewhat  to  bru- 
talities.   The  men  who  danced  and  sang,  played  the 


The  Field  71 

fiddle,  and  appreciated  the  romantic  and  dramatic 
possibilities  of  the  wonderland  they  inhabited  gave 
place  to  a  race  that  swung  the  ax  and  planted  corn 
in  the  clearings,  fought  and  hunted  for  recreation, 
were  content  to  do  without  either  politeness  or  reli- 
gion. Of  course,  the  French  settlers  did  not  disap- 
pear when  the  English  rule  commenced,  but  they 
were  no  longer  the  dominant  race,  and  new  ideas 
ruled.  The  development  of  this  frontier  from  the 
battle  of  the  Heights  of  Abraham  to  the  struggle 
for  American  independence  was  gradual  and  his- 
torically uneventful. 

The  exploit  of  Colonel  George  Rogers  Clark,  who 
in  February,  1779,  captured  Vincennes,  was  of  tre- 
mendous importance  to  the  future  of  the  United 
States.  In  view  of  our  great  development  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  no  more  fruitful  victory  has  ever  been 
achieved  within  the  borders  of  the  United  States. 
It  was  decisive  in  this  important  particular — that  it 
enabled  the  young  nation  to  maintain  her  claim  to 
the  territory  that  had  once  belonged  to  France, 
reaching  to  the  line  of  the  Spanish  possessions,  and, 
when  the  credit  of  the  infant  government  was  at  its 
lowest  ebb,  to  base  loans  upon  these  lands,  then  the 
only  available  collateral  that  the  nation  possessed. 
Mr.  E.  A.  Bryan,  writing  for  the  Magazine  of 
American  History  in  1889,  has  justly  said:  "All 
who  have  weighed  the  difficulties  and  dangers  at- 


y2  Nation  Builders 

tending  the  construction  period  following  the  Rev- 
olutionary War  know  that  the  basis  of  the  marvelous 
success  attending  the  financial  management  of  the 
illustrious  Hamilton  lay  in  the  millions  of  fertile 
acres  which  the  genius  and  the  sword  of  Clark  had 
won." 

In  the  territory  so  acquired  the  sale  of  homestead 
land  and  the  colonization  of  veteran  soldiers  was 
accomplished  by  the  formation  of  the  Ohio  Com- 
pany, a  plan  first  proposed  by  General  Rufus  Put- 
nam and  put  into  effect  as  soon  as  titles  could  be 
obtained  from  the  Indians  and  approximate  surveys 
made.  The  company,  in  brief,  was  organized  upon 
the  proposal  to  take  all  the  magnificent  country 
north  of  the  Ohio  River  and  sell  it  in  township  lots 
to  impoverished  soldiers  at  a  nominal  price  for  each 
lot.  To  the  individual  settler  his  section  was  almost 
a  free  gift,  so  small  was  the  price,  but  the  aggregate 
provided  a  welcome  and  necessary  addition  to  the 
depleted  national  treasury.  A  ])rovision  for  terri- 
torial government  was  also  made,  and  the  develop- 
ment into  states  of  the  newly  settled  lands  was  a 
l)art  of  the  far-reaching  plan.  The  work  of  coloni- 
zation was  done  through  the  Ohio  Joint  Stock  Com- 
pany, by  whose  agency  lands  were  purchased  and 
the  details  of  the  scheme  worked  out. 

These  were  the  sources  of  population  in  Ohio  and 
Indiana  and  all  of  the  so-called  Northwestern  Tcr- 


The  Field  73 

ritory.  First  the  French  conrcurs  des  hois,  in  scat- 
tered trading  posts;  then  the  coarser  but  far  more 
energetic  Enghsh  hunters  and  frontiersmen ;  and, 
last  of  all,  a  sudden  influx  of  resolute  New  Eng- 
landers  and  Virginians,  men  who  had  proved  their 
hardiness  on  the  battlefields  of  the  republic  from 
Concord  to  Yorktown.  Into  this  abounding  wilder- 
ness thousands  of  the  latter  class  went  and  were 
apparently  swallowed  up  in  the  shado\AS  of  the 
universal  woods.  An  army  poured  westward,  seg- 
regated, and  spread  like  the  bursting  of  a  rocket 
and  became  the  isolated  units  who  in  time  should 
form  nuclei  for  villages  and  towns. 

It  was  upon  such  a  field  as  this  that  the  tra\'eling 
preachers  entered.  In  the  northern  region  there 
was  perhaps  a  greater  basis  of  character,  serious- 
ness of  mind,  and  inherited  tendency  toward  religion 
and  morality  to  work  upon  than  in  the  south.  A 
large  portion  of  the  country  was  settled  by  dis- 
ciplined New  Englanders.  In  the  Cumberland  and 
the  Kentucky  settlements  the  people  seem  to  have 
been  less  self-controlled,  more  nervous,  and  more 
emotional,  and  perhaps  these  differences  will  account 
for  the  fact  that  the  flame  when  once  kindled  in 
the  south  spread  like  a  conflagration  in  the  forest, 
leaping  from  hamlet  to  hamlet  with  the  swiftness 
and  something  of  the  consuming  power  of  flame, 
while  northward  the  fire  crept  more  slowly  and 


74  Nation  Builders 

individuals  were  separately  won.  Both  north  and 
south  the  preachers  had  to  contend  with  the  same 
absence  of  the  restraints  of  a  well-organized  gov- 
ernment or  the  controlling  influences  of  civilized  life. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
Some  of  the  Sowers 

At  the  commencement  of  the  nineteenth  century 
Ohio,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  home  of  a  scattered 
population  of  about  forty-five  thousand  souls — that 
is  to  say,  a  handful  when  compared  with  the  extent  of 
the  territory  over  which  they  were  distributed.  John 
Kobler,  a  Virginian  by  birth,  is  supposed  to  have 
been  the  very  first  preacher  to  proclaim  the  gospel 
message  in  that  wild  country.  Sent  out  by  Asbury, 
he  pushed  his  way  as  far  as  the  hardiest  pioneer 
had  penetrated,  and  spent  eighteen  years  of  his  life 
in  unremitting  toil,  in  the  face  of  incredible  hard- 
ships, and  then  the  overtaxed  body  gave  out,  and 
he  was  retired  from  the  itinerant  field,  to  be  shortly 
afterward  put  upon  the  superannuated  list. 

It  will  perhaps  best  serve  the  purpose  of  this  work 
to  give  a  part  of  John  Kobler's  experiences  in  his 
own  words,  as  he  wrote  them  in  1841  for  the  West- 
ern Historical  Society: 

"In  the  year  1798  the  writer  of  this  article  was 
sent  by  Bishop  Asbury  as  a  missionary  to  this  region 
of  country,  then  called  the  Northwest  Territory, 
now  Ohio  State,  to  form  a  new  circuit  and  to  plant 
the  first  principles  of  the  gospel. 


76  Nation  Builders 

"In  passing  through  the  country  I  found  it  ahiiost 
in  its  native,  rude,  and  uncultivated  state.  The  in- 
habitants were  settled  in  small  neighborhoods,  few 
and  far  between,  and  little  or  no  improvement  about 
them.  No  sound  of  the  everlasting  gospel  had  yet 
broken  upon  their  ears.  The  site  where  Cincinnati 
now  stands  was  nearly  a  dense  and  uncultivated 
forest.  No  improvement  was  to  be  seen  but  Fort 
Washington,  which  was  built  on  the  brow  of  the 
hill  and  extended  down  to  the  margin  of  the  river; 
around  which  was  built  a  number  of  cabins,  in  which 
resided  the  settlers  of  the  place.  This  fortress  was 
then  under  the  command  of  General  Harrison,  and 
was  the  great  place  of  rendezvous  for  the  federal 
troops  which  were  sent  by  the  government  to 
guard  the  frontiers  or  to  go  forth  to  war  with  the 
Indians." 

Kobler  is  described  as  a  man  of  more  than  ordi- 
nary strength  and  endurance,  with  mental  endow- 
ments above  the  average.  He  was  the  first  of  that 
devoted  band  of  missionary  preachers  who  stood  at 
the  threshold  of  new  destinies,  to  guide  the  popula- 
tion of  the  Ohio  frontier  into  the  ways  of  order,  law, 
and  religion.  WHiat  incalculable  influence  he  and 
his  colaborers  wielded  can  only  be  guessed.  The 
first  communion  table  spread  in  Ohio  by  John 
Kobler  drew  together  from  all  quarters  between 
twenty-five  and  thiily  communicants.     Forty  years 


Some  of  the  Sowers  77 

later  the  Methodist  Church  had  enrolled  there  a  hun- 
dred thousand  members. 

Benjamin  Lakin  was  another  of  the  early  preach- 
ers in  Ohio.  He  followed  Kobler  closel}^,  and  was 
appointed  to  the  Southern  Miami  District,  as  it  was 
called ;  and,  what  makes  his  case  somewhat  unique 
for  that  place  and  time,  he  took  his  young-  wife  with 
him.  A  personal  account  given  by  J.  B.  Finley  of 
his  first  meeting-  with  this  courageous  preacher  re- 
fers to  the  year  1802 :  "It  was  during  this  year  we 
became  acquainted  with  this  pioneer.  We  met  him 
as  he  was  moving  from  Kentucky  to  the  field  of  his 
labor.  The  point  where  we  met  him  was  on  the 
eastern  side  of  the  Little  Miami,  the  track  of  the 
railroad  now  (1855)  occupying  the  spot.  Then 
there  was  nothing  which  deserved  the  name  of  a 
road — a  kind  of  a  trace.  We  were  surprised  to  see 
a  man  and  a  woman  in  a  cart  drawn  by  one  horse ; 
surprised,  because  this  was  a  superior  way  of  trav- 
eling, not  known  to  the  settlers,  who  traveled  and 
carried  their  movables  on  pack  horses.  As  we  came 
up  we  halted  to  look  at  his  vehicle." 

There  is  something  very  naive  and  charming  in 
the  picture  here  suggested,  the  horseman  looking 
with  more  admiration  and  curiosity  on  the  luxury 
of  a  springless.  rough,  two-wheeled  cart  than  we 
would  bestow  upon  the  latest  triumph  from  the 
shops  of  fashionable  manufacturers. 


78  Nation  Builders 

'As  we  stopped,  he  inquired  how  far  it  was  to 
the  next  house.  This  we  were  unable  to  tell,  for 
the  road  was  uninhabited.  We  then  had  the  curi- 
osity to  ask  him  who  he  was,  where  he  was  going, 
and  what  was  his  business.  He  quickly  replied: 
'My  name  is  Lakin ;  I  am  a  jMethodist  preacher,  and 
am  going  to  preach  the  gospel  to  lost  sinners  in  the 
Miami  and  Scioto  country." 

Sixteen  years  Lakin  stood  it;  then  he  went  back 
and  was  put  on  the  superannuated  list.  It  was  a 
hard  life,  that  might  superannuate  a  man  of  thirty- 
five  or  forty.  How  gloriously  they  spent  them- 
selves, those  great,  brave  fellows  of  a  heroic  time! 
They  did  not  go  blindfold,  but  with  open  eyes  faced 
the  conditions  that  meant  a  shortened  life  for  most 
of  them.  Some  of  them  got  no  pay,  and  none  of 
them  ever  received  much.  They  would  not  beg  for 
themselves,  being  proud  and  self-reliant  men,  and 
they  were  often  hungry  and  cold — a  long  proces- 
sion of  them,  four  thousand  ordained  by  Bishop 
Asbury  alone;  old  young  men,  prematurely  worn 
out,  victims  of  fever,  of  starvation,  of  exhaustion; 
but  no  record  has  ever  reached  us  of  any  complaint 
from  a  man  of  them,  save  this,  that  they  could  not 
spend  their  lives  faster  in  their  barter  for  souls. 

There  have  been  other  martyrs  in  the  world's 
story,  and  will  doubtless  be  many  more  as  long  as 
the  path  of  duty  starts  away  at  right  angles  from 


SCME   OF   THE    SoWERS  79 

"the  primrose  path  of  dalliance."  The  unique  fea- 
ture in  the  martyrdom  we  have  been  contemplating 
was  the  fact  that  the  martyrs  of  the  frontier  cir- 
cuits were  not  only  cheerful  but  often  jovial  men. 
They  delighted  in  innocent  mirth,  could  tell  a  good 
story,  and  laugh  at  even  their  own  mishaps.  Theirs 
was  courage  of  the  highest  order,  that  could  make 
light  of  dangers  and  turn  difficulties  into  a  jest. 

There  was  at  one  time  in  the  Northwest  a  sturdy 
preacher  by  the  name  of  Jesse  Walker,  and  his  ex- 
ploits have  become  familiar  traditions  in  the  field 
where  he  labored.  He  went  in  his  youth  from 
North  Carolina  into  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  and 
for  ten  years  he  ranged  the  forest  and  kept  just 
ahead  of  the  foremost  of  his  brethren.  It  was  said 
that  he  could  not  be  tired  out,  but  would  travel 
without  rest  or  food,  with  an  almost  superhuman 
patience  and  endurance.  He  had  the  woodsman's 
ability  to  locate  the  place  he  wanted  to  reach  and 
travel  to  it  in  a  straight  line,  as  the  bee  or  the 
pigeon  does,  without  map  or  guide.  He  could  not 
get  lost  either  in  the  mountains  or  the  canebrake, 
and  he  traveled  with  a  delightful  disregard  of  such 
small  conveniences  as  roads  or  trails. 

Walker's  ruling  passion  was  to  convert  souls,  and 
it  was  a  matter  of  pride  with  him  to  be  always  first 
on  the  ground.  In  1806  he  was  appointed  to  the 
Illinois  Circuit,  and  set  out  in  company  with  I\Ic- 


8o  Nation  Builders 

Kendree,  who  was  presiding  elder  of  the  Cumber- 
land District,  of  which  the  Illinois  Circuit  was  a 
part.  They  carried  all  their  belongings  in  their 
saddlebags,  and  camped  by  the  way,  as  the  country 
over  which  they  passed  was  entirely  unsettled  and 
unbroken.  It  must  have  been  an  exciting  and  pleas- 
urable journey  to  two  such  adventurous  pilgrims, 
for  they  had  rain,  river  floods,  wild  beasts,  and  other 
untoward  tilings  to  combat.  They  swam  the  rivers 
and  climbed  the  hills  with  the  zest  of  boys  out  for 
a  holiday.  After  forming  a  new  circuit  McKendree 
went  toward  Missouri,  and  Walker  began  to  hunt 
out  the  scattered  members  of  his  appointed  parish 
and  see  that  not  one  was  neglected.  A  man  could 
not  bury  himself  so  deep  in  the  wilderness  that 
Walker  did  not  find  him  and  talk  to  him  about  his 
sins  and  the  way  of  salvation.  To  those  who  did  not 
want  to  hear  him  he  must  have  seemed  a  perfect 
pest.  It  is  told  of  him  that  once  a  new  settler  had 
just  selected  a  site  for  his  cabin  and  was  looking- 
for  timber  to  build  with  when  the  preacher  appeared, 
equipped  with  his  Bible  and  full  of  zeal  for  the  new- 
comer's spiritual  welfare.  He  was  greeted  emphat- 
ically, if  not  cordially,  by  the  latter,  who  explained, 
with  considerable  warmth,  that  he  had  moved  from 
his  last  place  to  get  rid  of  the  Methodist  preachers, 
who  were  worrying  him  to  death. 

( )n  another  occasion  a  brother  preacher  made  up 


Some  of  the  Sowers  8i 

his  mind  that  if  it  was  possible  he  would  steal  a 
march  on  Walker,  as  he  never  visited  a  new  family 
that  he  did  not  find  the  other  had  been  ahead  of  him 
and  had  already  preached  to  them.  Hearing  that  a 
new  family  had  located  at  Root  River  (Racine), 
he  hurried  to  visit  them.  On  his  way  he  stopped 
at  Fort  Dearborn  (now  Chicago)  and  met  Walker, 
who  owned  to  being  a  little  tired,  as  he  had  just 
come  back  from  a  call  on  that  nciv  family  at  Root 
River.  Elder  John  Sinclair  told  the  story,  and 
added  that  after  that  experience  he  owned  defeat 
and  left  the  old  pioneer  to  the  unquestioned  enjoy- 
ment of  his  laurels. 

Preeminent  among  American  Methodists  was 
Francis  Asbury.  Though  an  Englishman  by  birth, 
he  had  begun  to  be  accustomed  to  the  New  World 
and  its  ways  when  at  the  Christmas  Conference 
in  1784  he  was  chosen  and  consecrated  a  bishop, 
and  he  became  the  natural  leader  of  the  great  move- 
ment that  has  influenced  national  life  to  an  extent 
that  few  movements  have  equaled  and  few  historians 
have  recognized. 

It  appears  that  j\Ir.  Asbury  refused  the  invest- 
ment upon  authority  delegated  by  Mr.  Wesley  till 
the  choice  had  been  confirmed  and  urged  by  the 
Conference,  when  he  yielded  to  what  must  have 
seemed,  even  with  such  a  backing,  a  very  startling 
innovation.    Never  had  a  bishop  been  so  democrat- 


82  Nation  Builders 

ically  indorsed,  and  it  may  be  said  that  no  conse- 
cration of  a  similar  character  ever  met  with  a 
greater  outburst  of  disapproval  from  the  Church  of 
England.  Charles  Wesley  was  particularly  vehement 
in  his  protest  against  a  measure  which  he  regarded 
not  only  as  a  dangerous  but  a  wicked  innovation. 

One  of  the  first  official  acts  of  the  new  bishop  was 
the  signing  of  a  memorial  to  Washington,  setting 
forth  the  loyalty  of  the  Methodist  clergy  to  the 
infant  government.  The  Methodists  were  the  first 
to  offer  to  Washington  congratulations  upon  his 
election  to  the  Presidency,  and  the  Methodists  were 
his  firm  and  loyal  supporters  always. 

What  might  have  been  the  history  of  Methodism, 
and  how  modified  the  history  of  the  United  States 
might  have  been,  had  it  not  been  for  the  pronounced 
Americanism  of  Francis  Asbury,  of  Staffordshire, 
it  is  impossible  to  say;  but  it  is  not  too  much  to 
affirm  that  the  influence  he  wielded  has  seldom  been 
surpassed  by  that  of  any  single  man  in  America, 
and  that  its  great  weight  was  always  in  the  balance 
with  whatever  measure  conserved  the  union  of  the 
American  states  and  the  unity  of  the  American 
people. 

The  Englishmen  sent  as  preachers  to  the  Amer- 
ican colonies  before  the  war  by  the  Wesleyan  Con- 
ference nearly  all  returned  to  the  mother  country 
when  hostilities  commenced.     The  two  exceptions 


Some  of  the  Sowers  83 

to  that  exodus  from  the  chosen  field  were  said  to 
be  Shadford  and  Asbury.  Bishop  Simpson  is  au- 
thority for  the  statement  that  Asbury  alone  remained 
at  his  post. 

An  early  evidence  of  the  new  bishop's  zeal  was 
displayed  in  his  effort  to  found  a  much  needed  col- 
lege in  the  neighborhood  of  Baltimore.  This  subject 
was  broached  during  the  first  meeting  between  Dr. 
Coke  and  Mr.  Asbury,  and  so  energetically  did  they 
work  that  when  the  Conference  met  they  had  suc- 
ceeded in  raising  about  a  thousand  pounds  by 
subscription. 

Francis  Asbury  was  forty-two  years  younger  than 
Wesley,  to  whom  alone  he  has  been  second  in  in- 
fluence in  the  society  they  served.  The  wisdom  and 
humanity  of  the  younger  man,  his  high  faith  and 
noble  courage,  made  him  a  fit  leader  of  men,  and 
his  untiring  zeal  and  industry  enabled  him  to  im- 
press upon  his  generation  so  deep  a  mark  that  there 
seems  to  be  no  immediate  danger  of  its  effacement. 
Asbury  commenced  his  education  at  an  English  vil- 
lage school,  but  his  schooldays  were  brief,  coming  to 
an  end  when  he  had  reached  the  age  of  fourteen 
years,  when  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  trade,  as  was 
customary  at  that  day.  Two  years  later  he  became 
a  local  preacher,  and  was  received  by  Wesley  into 
the  itinerant  ministry  at  twenty-two.  When  twenty- 
six  years  of  age  he  came  to  America  as  a  missionary. 


84  Nation  Builders 

Unused  to  woods  and  woodcraft,  to  the  hardships 
and  makeshifts  of  pioneer  settlements  and  the  perils 
of  the  almost  unbroken  frontier,  he  made  himself 
master  of  this  new  art  of  semi-savage  living,  learned 
to  follow  a  blazed  trail,  and  to  camp  far  from  the 
habitations  of  men,  and,  indeed,  in  all  things  to  con- 
form to  the  usages  of  the  people  among  whom  his 
lut  was  cast. 

When  he  came  to  America  there  was  but  one 
]\Iethodist  society  having  a  stated  place  of  worship 
— that  in  New  York  city — and  in  all  the  land  the 
followers  of  John  Wesley  numbered  not  more  than 
six  hundred  souls,  scattered  over  two  states.  He 
lived  to  see  the  little  handful  increase  to  a  multitude. 
As  the  first  INIethodist  bishop  to  wear  that  title  in 
America,  he  was  at  the  head  of  every  movement, 
cither  educational  or  ecclesiastical.  He  traveled 
— at  a  day  when  to  tra\-cl  meant  unbroken  roads 
and  saddlebags — over  two  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  miles,  visiting  every  part  of  the  country 
where  the  foot  of  a  white  man  had  strayed,  braving 
forest,  mountain,  rmd  swamp  with  dauntless  cour- 
age, preaching  abo\'e  sixteen  thousand  sermons,  and 
converting  an  unnnmbcrcd  host.  In  the  ranks  of 
llic  workers  of  all  the  ages  there  arc  few  who  can 
claim  a  right  to  stand  beside  Bishop  Asbury. 

We  have  bnt  commenced  the  story  of  liis  labors. 
He  ordained  (hiring  the  successive  years  of  his  min- 


Some  of  the  Sowers  85 

istiy  four  thousand  preachers,  each  one  of  whom 
was  as  a  torch  Hghted  in  a  dark  place.  He  presided 
at  two  hundred  and  twenty-four  Conferences.  He 
laid  the  foundation  of  the  first  Methodist  college, 
and  worked  with  all  his  great  strength  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  comprehensive  educational  system, 
to  be  extended  to  every  district  throughout  the  land. 
There  was  often  a  Pauline  cast  to  his  adventures, 
and  certainly  a  strong  suggestion  of  the  great  apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  in  his  character.  To  the  end  of  his 
long  life  he  remained  single,  being  of  the  opinion 
that  a  wife  might  distract  his  attention  from  his 
work.  He  was  a  mighty  organizer,  a  general,  the 
man  most  needed  for  the  American  branch  of 
Wesley's  following. 

While  Asbury  may  have  lacked  the  almost  peril- 
ous sublimation  of  Wesley's  more  exalted  moods, 
which  were  at  times  too  mystical  for  popular  com- 
prehension, and  while  he  certainly  did  not  follow 
him  into  those  awful  depths  of  doubt  and  despond- 
ency into  which  the  great  leader  was  prone  to 
plunge,  yet  one  may  question  if  his  more  normally 
balanced  temperament  and  wisely  controlled  intel- 
lect did  not  make  him  a  better  and  safer  leader  for 
the  men  of  the  new  country.  American  IMethodism, 
that  great  system,  solid  to  withstand  the  world  and 
sufficiently  elastic  to  embrace  Christendom,  fine  in 
its  conception  and  magnificent  in  its  results,  was 


86  Nation  Builders 

largely  the  work,  under  Providence,  of  Bishop 
Asbury,  or  at  least  was  planned  under  the  immedi- 
ate direction  of  his  genius.  If  success  is  to  be 
measured  by  the  extent  to  which  a  man  accomplishes 
the  object  that  lies  nearest  to  his  heart,  then  Francis 
Asbury  must  be  accounted  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful men  that  America  has  ever  known,  though, 
like  his  Master,  he  was  poor  in  purse  and  often  had 
not  where  to  lay  his  head.  He  died  at  Spottsyl- 
vania,  Virginia,  March  31,  1816. 

Bishop  Asbury's  views  on  the  itinerancy  were 
strong,  his  expression  of  them  unequivocal.  Soon 
after  his  landing  in  America  he  wrote :  "At  present 
I  am  dissatisfied.  My  brethren  seem  unwilling  to 
leave  the  cities  (that  is,  in  the  winter  season),  but 
I  think  I  shall  show  them  the  way.  ...  I  am  in 
trouble,  and  more  trouble  is  at  hand,  for  I  am  de- 
termined to  make  a  stand  against  all  partiality.  I 
have  nothing  to  seek  but  the  glory  of  God,  nothing 
to  fear  but  his  displeasure." 

The  bishop's  way  of  making  appointments  showed 
that  inexorable,  soldierly  bent  of  character  that  was 
one  of  his  strong  qualifications  for  leadership.  lie 
first  studied  the  characters  and  temperaments  of 
the  men  to  be  appointed.  Next,  he  made  as  careful 
a  survey  of  the  ground  as  possible,  traveling  annu- 
ally thousands  of  miles  to  accomplish  this  end. 
I''inally,  having  fitted  the  laborer  to  his  field  accord- 


Some  of  the  Sowers  87 

ing  to  his  own  best  judgment,  he  made  the  matter 
the  subject  of  earnest  prayer  for  guidance.  His 
resolve  once  formed,  nothing  of  an  ordinary  char- 
acter was  suffered  to  interfere  with  it.  He  made 
his  Hst  of  appointments  with  ahnost  despotic  power, 
but  with  a  conscientious  regard  for  the  great  work 
of  the  church.  All  recognized  that  he  was  but  the 
servant  of  the  work,  at  one  in  that  regard  with  the 
youngest  and  most  obscure  man  in  the  ranks. 

He  showed  the  highest  confidence  in  the  preachers, 
his  beloved  brethren,  by  treating  them  exactly  as 
he  treated  himself — without  consideration.  At  the 
end  of  a  Conference  the  bishop  read  without  com- 
ment or  interruption  the  list  of  appointments,  the 
preparation  of  which  had  cost  him  labor  and 
thought,  tears  and  prayers  without  limit  or  number. 
Sometimes  with  trembling  voice  he  read,  knowing 
the  hardships  and  dangers  to  which  his  word  would 
commit  these  dear  laborers,  but  always  inexorably. 
When  the  last  name  was  read,  it  has  been  told,  he 
turned  at  once  to  the  door,  where  his  horse  stood 
saddled,  and  rode  away  to  avoid  possible  discussion 
or  appeal. 

It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  Asbury  found  the 
itinerant  feature  of  the  Wesleyan  work  in  America 
already  disappearing  when  he  arrived,  and  that  he 
revivified  it.  Dr.  Daniels  says:  "Beyond  all  doubt 
this  young  Englishman,  by  his  sagacious  manage- 


88  Nation  Builders 

ment  of  this  very  question,  saved  the  cause  of  Meth- 
odism in  America  from  early  and  inglorious  death. 
.  .  .  Colonial  Alethodism  and  a  settled  ministry 
were  entirely  incompatible."  The  Methodist  preach- 
ers got  to  be  known  as  the  saddlebag  men.  The 
two  requisites  to  a  clerical  equipment  were  a  horse 
and  a  Bible.  Some  one  has  said  that  after  asking 
if  a  candidate  had  the  grace  of  God  in  his  heart, 
and  the  ability  to  preach  or  exhort,  the  very  next 
question  always  was,  "Has  he  a  horse?"  Without 
the  latter  it  would  have  been  next  to  impossible  to 
traverse  the  wilderness.  For  half  a  century  after 
Asbury's  advent  the  gospel  was  on  horseback  in 
America. 

One  reads  with  amazement  some  of  the  records 
of  the  hardships  and  dangers  of  the  early  circuit 
riders.  Like  a  page  from  some  old  saga  comes  the 
account  of  Burke's  ride,  from  appointment  to  ap- 
pointment, through  a  country  swarming  with  hostile 
red  men,  when  the  settlers  gathered  in  blockhouses 
or  behind  palisades,  rifle  in  hand.  During  the 
Cherokee  War  the  preacher  was  near  the  French 
Broad  River  and  was  warned  that  it  would  prob- 
ably mean  death  to  him  to  sally  forth  on  his  circuit. 
At  his  first  appointment  he  found  the  people  gath- 
ered with  direful  accounts  of  a  large  force  of  sav- 
ages within  the  limits  of  the  settlement.  Neverthe- 
less, having  got  what  hearing  he  could  at  the  first 


Some  of  the  Sowers  89 

and  not  losing  his  life,  he  set  out  for  the  second 
appointment,  on  the  south  bank  of  the  Little  River. 
Two  men  were  found  who  oft'ercd  to  pilot  him 
through  the  woods;  but  the  evidences  of  danger 
multiplied  till  they  were  driven  back  to  protect  their 
families,  and  the  preacher  went  on  alone. 

The  next  settlement  was  also  alarmed,  and  Burke 
\\as  met  by  a  crowd  of  eager  men  and  women  en- 
gaged in  strengthening  the  defenses  of  their  houses. 
They  were  too  busy  to  listen  to  preaching.  The 
tales  of  Indian  atrocities,  which  are  merely  literature 
to  most  of  us,  were  terrible  realities  to  the  people 
of  the  frontier  of  that  day.  With  almost  frantic 
haste  they  gathered  material  for  defense  as  long  as 
the  light  lasted,  and  when  night  came  sat  down  in 
the  darkness,  not  daring  to  make  a  light,  each  man 
with  his  rifle  in  his  hand. 

Finding  this  frightened  flock  unable  to  compre- 
hend the  words  he  spoke  to  them,  Burke  set  out 
again,  traveling  by  night  so  as  to  avoid  the  savages, 
and  leading  his  horse  over  a  great  part  of  the  way. 
Stealing  through  the  forest  in  the  dark,  on  foot  and 
alone,  from  danger  to  danger,  this  intrepid  member 
of  a  heroic  band  followed  the  path  of  duty  without 
question,  though  to  say  that  he  was  without  fear 
would  indicate  an  almost  insensible  mind. 

At  length,  still  under  cover  of  the  darkness,  he 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  settlement  he  sought,  and 


90  Nation  Builders 

there  found  himself  face  to  face  with  a  new  danger, 
as  the  inhabitants  thought  him  an  Indian,  trying  to 
decoy  them,  and  prepared  to  "fill  him  full  of  lead." 
Finally  a  woman  recognized  the  preacher's  voice, 
and  he  was  admitted.  After  the  natural  expressions 
of  amazement  at  the  risks  that  a  Methodist  preacher 
would  take  to  fill  his  appointments,  the  people  lis- 
tened attentively  while  he  preached  and  prayed  with 
them.  The  next  day,  in  spite  of  their  protests,  he 
proceeded  upon  his  circuit.  On  his  next  round  the 
brave  itinerant  found  to  his  deep  sorrow  that  all 
of  the  people  at  that  place  had  been  murdered  by 
the  savages,  though  he  had  escaped,  through  a  coun- 
try swarming  with  them,  without  the  slightest 
injury. 

Bishop  Asbury  was  frequently  exposed  to  the 
same  dangers  which  at  this  distance  of  time  add  a 
romantic  charm  to  the  story  of  his  colaborers.  Upon 
one  occasion,  having  reason  to  fear  an  Indian  at- 
tack while  upon  his  way  to  a  Conference,  he  and  a 
few  companions  stretched  a  rope  around  their  tem- 
porary stopping  place,  with  the  idea  of  tripping  any 
stealthy  foe  who  might  try  to  approach  under  cover 
of  darkness.  Each  man,  except  those  on  sentinel 
duty,  slept  with  the  bridle  of  his  horse  around  his 
arm,  and  so  a  night  in  the  forest  was  passed,  but 
without  attack.  Despite  the  fact  that  they  were  dis- 
turbed and  harrassed  by  the  way,  the  bishop  and 


Some  of  the  Sowers  91 

his  little  cortege  reached  the  Conference  in  safety, 
though  the  country  was  ahve  with  hostile  foes  and 
every  week  brought  its  record  of  atrocities. 

The  discouragements  that  beset  the  preacher  were 
not  always  in  the  way  of  physical  obstacles  or  dan- 
gers. It  took  peculiar  force  and  nerve  to  compel 
the  attention  of  an  indifferent  or  even  hostile  audi- 
ence. Some  of  the  younger  and  more  diffident 
preachers  must  have  gone  through  a  purgatorial 
experience  on  some  of  the  wilder  circuits.  It  is 
told  of  the  great  McKendree,  afterward  a  bishop, 
that  when  upon  his  first  circuit  he  made  so  unfavor- 
able a  first  impression  that  a  brother  who  was  to  be 
his  host  openly  expressed  his  disgust.  "What  will 
they  send  us  next?"  he  burst  out.  The  young 
preacher  heard  him,  and  was  quite  ready  to  share 
the  unfavorable  opinion.  He  preached  in  fear  and 
trembling,  and  without  much  edification.  As  he  did 
not  afterward  appear  at  the  house,  his  host  went  to 
hunt  him  up,  and  found  him  at  the  scene  of  his 
defeat,  sitting  dejectedly,  with  his  head  in  his  hands. 
He  wanted  nothing  to  eat,  he  said.  He  felt  that 
he  was  a  failure,  and  he  could  not  summon  courage 
to  face  the  people.  After  some  persuasion  he  fol- 
lowed his  host  home,  and  there  agreed  with  him 
that  he  would  better  make  arrangements  to  leave  the 
field  to  some  better  man.  However,  while  going 
to  cancel  his  appointments  he  was  persuaded,  by 


92  Nation  Builders 

some  people  who  were  more  hungry  for  preaching 
than  critical  as  to  its  quality,  to  try  again.  The  re- 
sult was  exactly  the  reverse  of  what  he  anticipated. 
McKendree  stayed  in  his  circuit,  and  the  Methodist 
Church  was  fortunate  in  this  preservation  of  one  of 
her  strongest  and  most  useful  men. 

Among  the  preachers  whom  Asbury  ordained, 
or  who  were  his  colaborers  at  the  meeting  of  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  were  not  a  few 
who  were  his  very  antithesis  in  personality  and 
method.  Among  these  was  one  who  combined  much 
native  shrewdness  and  a  ready  if  rough  eloquence 
with  consuming  zeal. 

Benjamin  Abbott  was  a  Pennsylvanian,  unedu- 
cated, but  zealous,  who  preached  in  a  sort  of  phrensy 
that  was  comnumicated  to  his  hearers.  He  carried 
the  sword  of  fire,  and,  with  the  stern  demeanor  of 
an  avenging  spirit,  wielded  it  till  he  had  driven  his 
audience  to  the  smoking  edge  of  the  bottomless  pit 
before  extending  to  them  the  olive  branch  of  divine 
mercy.  He  proclaimed  that  "God  without  Christ 
is  a  consuming  fire,"  and  that  fire  was  to  him  so 
real  and  overwhelming  that  it  was  no  unusual  thing 
for  the  hearers  to  be  thrown  into  convulsions  or  for 
the  preacher  to  faint  from  the  excess  of  his  emotion. 

One  of  the  incidents  of  his  preaching  has  been 
related  somewhat  as  follows :  A  young  man  standing 
near  a  blazing  wood  fire  fell  in  a  fit  as  Abbott  de- 


Some  of  the  Sowers  93 

picted  the  torments  of  the  lost,  and  he  narrowly 
missed  being  burned,  his  companions  with  difficulty 
rescuing  him.  A  young  Quaker  girl  was  singled 
out  for  reprobation  because  she  did  not  show  any 
sign  of  penitence.  At  a  funeral  the  preacher  took 
advantage  of  the  awe  and  fear  occasioned  by  a  ter- 
rific thunderstorm  to  set  before  his  trembling  hearers 
the  awful  coming  of  the  Lord.  Sudden  streams  of 
lightning  illuminated  the  house,  and  the  incessant 
thunder  shook  it  to  its  foundations.  "Who  knows," 
cried  the  vehement  evangelist,  "but  that  the  Lord 
may  descend  with  the  next  clap  of  thunder !"  With 
that,  his  journal  tells  us,  the  people  began  to  cry  and 
scream  and  fell  all  around  the  house.  Fourteen 
years  afterward  he  found  in  that  place  twelve  active 
Christians  who  dated  their  conversion  from  that 
time  and  occasion. 

Robert  Southey  says  of  him:  "Abbott  seems  to 
have  been  a  sincere  and  well-meaning  enthusiast, 
on  the  verge  of  madness  himself,"  which  seems  al- 
most as  fanatical  as  the  rough-and-ready  methods 
that  he  reprobates ;  but  presently  this  note  is  added : 
"The  fermentation  of  Methodism  will  cease  in 
America  as  it  has  ceased  in  England,  and  even  dur- 
ing its  effervescence  the  good  which  it  has  produced 
is  greater  than  the  evil."  Perhaps  It  was  difficult 
for  Southey  to  entertain  a  just  view  of  revival 
methods  as  foreign  as  those  of  Abbott  to  his  cultl- 


94  Nation  Builders 

vated,  ccsthetic  taste,  but  he  testified  again  and  again 
to  the  tangible  results  of  the  work  and  the  unselfish 
zeal  of  the  workers  in  that  early  awakening. 

Abbott  was  once  rebuked  by  a  broad-brimmed 
listener,  who  objected  to  his  realistic  portrayal  of 
avenging  justice  on  the  ground  that  the  Lord  was 
not  in  the  earthquake  nor  the  whirlwind,  but  in  the 
still  small  voice.  The  preacher  retorted:  "Do  you 
know  that  the  earthquake  is  the  mighty  thunder  of 
God's  voice  from  Mount  Sinai  ?  It  is  the  divine  law 
to  drive  us  to  Christ.  And  the  whirlwind  is  the 
power  of  con\-iction,  like  the  rushing  of  a  mighty 
wind,  tearing  away  every  false  hope  and  stripping 
us  of  every  plea."  Commenting  on  this  reply, 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  commends  it,  but  adds 
that  it  would  have  been  still  better  if  he  had  told 
his  Quaker  critic  that  it  was  by  God's  ordinance  that 
the  earthquake  and  the  whirlwind  should  go  before 
the  still  small  voice. 

Certain  it  is  that  in  the  early  days  of  Methodism 
the  penitent  stood,  as  he  was  expected  to  stand,  as 
in  the  cave  of  Horeb,  and  felt  the  very  foundations 
of  his  soul  shaken,  before  receiving  the  word  of 
peace.  The  violence  of  Abbott  and  his  companions 
had  an  effect  upon  untauglit,  unreflecting,  unregen- 
erate  men  that  we  cannot  conceive  would  have  been 
accomplished  by  milder  methods.  The  robust,  un- 
compromising insistence  that  the  natural  heart  is  at 


Some  of  the  Sowers  95 

enmity  with  God,  and  that  such  enmity  is  a  neces- 
sarily fatal  struggle  against  just  and  irresistible 
wrath,  led  to  results  that  all  the  milder  preachments 
of  modern  pulpits  never  could  have  attained.  To 
criticize  the  primitive  methods  of  Abbott  and  those 
like  him  upon  the  ground  that  their  treatment  was 
heroic  invites  the  retort  that  they  believed  the  disease 
to  be  violent,  and  that  a  church  which  accepts  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Lamb  of  God  for  sin  and  does  not 
treat  sin  as  the  greatest  imaginable  calamity  belittles 
its  own  creed.  The  evangelists  reached  all  classes 
of  people,  from  the  small  city  or  town  of  the  older 
state  to  the  lonely  dwellers  in  the  depths  of  the 
forest.  We  read  that  "the  fine,  the  gay,  threw 
off  their  ruffles,  their  rings,  their  earrings,  their 
feathers."  The  first  years  of  civil  liberty  were 
marked  by  an  astonishing  renaissance  of  spiritual 
life,  which  has  produced  a  marked  effect  upon  the 
character  of  the  American  people  and  the  stability 
of  the  American  government. 

Among  what  might  now  appear  the  humors  of 
that  early  day  of  frontier  work  and  sacrifice,  though 
certainly  the  actors  and  narrators  saw  nothing  hu- 
morous in  the  situation,  was  the  capture  of  a  Pres- 
byterian meeting  by  a  couple  of  Methodist  preachers 
and  the  conversion  of  a  quiet  and  reposeful  session, 
"where  there  had  been  some  show  of  interest,"  into  a 
tempestuous  revival  scene.    Not  that  the  Methodist 


96  Nation  Builders 

preachers  were  intruders  or  imagined  themselves 
to  be  so.  On  the  contrary,  the  Presbyterian  brothers 
seemed  to  have  insisted  upon  one  of  the  visitors 
preaching  a  sermon.  But,  once  started,  they  did 
not  stop  for  a  moment  to  consider  the  customs  or 
prejudices  of  the  church  family  whose  guests  they 
were. 

William  Burke,  who  was  the  foremost  on  that 
occasion,  said  afterward:  "I  took  for  my  text.  To 
you  is  the  word  of  this  salvation  sent,'  and  before 
I  concluded  there  was  a  great  trembling  among  the 
dry  bones.  Great  numbers  fell  to  the  ground  and 
cried  for  mercy,  old  and  young.  Brother  Lakin 
followed  with  one  of  his  then  powerful  exhorta- 
tions, and  the  work  increased.  The  Presbyterian 
ministers  stood  astonished,  not  knowing  what  to 
make  of  such  a  tumult.  Brother  Lakin  and  myself 
proceeded  to  exhort  and  pray  with  them.  Some 
obtained  peace  with  God  before  the  meeting  broke 
up.  This  was  the  first  appearance  of  the  revival 
in  the  Presbyterian  Church." 

The  Presbyterian  ministers  who  "stood  aston- 
ished" at  such  an  exhibition  of  good  Methodist 
fervor  and  zeal  form  a  picture  which  the  mind  con- 
templates wilh  keen  enjoy  men  I.  We  would  gladly 
know  just  what  they  might  have  said  about  the 
event  if  they  had  left  any  record  of  it. 

Among  the  strongest  and  most  useful  men  in 


Some  of  the  Sowers  97 

the  Methodist  connection  there  seemed  at  the  outset 
Httle  incHnation  to  take  up  the  cudgels  on  doctrinal 
points  unless  forced  to  do  so  by  direct  attack.  In- 
deed, we  may  readily  understand  that  men  whose 
preparation  for  the  ministry  did  not  ever  include 
the  curriculum  of  a  theological  school  and  seldom 
got  beyond  the  great  fundamental  truths  of  Chris- 
tian belief  were  not  particularly  anxious  to  meet  an- 
tagonists shotted  to  the  muzzle  with  the  tenets  of 
Geneva  and  Westminster.  For  the  most  part  we 
think  there  is  every  evidence  that  the  first  genera- 
tion or  two  of  the  Methodist  preachers  had  all  that 
they  could  attend  to  ^^•ithout  courting  theological 
dissensions.  But  when  the  occasion  came  they 
could  draw  the  lines  close  and  stand  up  with  grim 
courage  and  determination  to  do  battle  for  their 
views. 

When  some  Presbyterians  demanded  how  certain 
doctrines  were  held  by  their  Methodist  friends,  on  the 
eve  of  a  communion  service  which  was  to  have  been 
a  union  one,  the  challenge  was  accepted  with  a  fine 
Old  Testament  emphasis.  The  cry  rang  out  over 
the  Methodist  host:  "Every  man  to  his  tent,  O 
Israel."  And  every  man  was  required  to  give  a  pub- 
lic declaration  of  his  belief  in  certain  doctrines.  At 
a  later  day  polemical  discourses  were  in  vogue,  and 
bitter  denunciations  of  other  members  of  the  family 
of  Christ  became  the  fashion— a  fashion  which 


98  Nation  Builders 

nearly  all  Protestant  churches  followed  in  a  not 
very  distant  past. 

There  seemed  to  be  no  limit  to  the  activity  of 
some  of  the  sturdy  men  who  built  the  foundation 
walls  of  our  social  institutions.  The  specializing 
tendency  of  the  present  day  makes  it  more  likely 
that  a  man  shall  know  part  of  one  trade  or  pro- 
fession than  that  he  shall  profess  a  mastery  of  sev- 
eral ;  but  at  the  commencement  of  the  century  of 
which  we  have  seen  the  final  years  it  was  not  so. 
We  read  of  men  who  were  farmers,  soldiers,  legis- 
lators, and  merchants,  with  what  the  commercial 
slang  of  to-day  would  designate  as  a  "side  line"  of 
teaching,  surveying,  or  preaching.  Yet  even  among 
his  contemporaries  William  Beauchamp  must  have 
passed  as  a  man  of  unusual  activity,  if  we  are  to 
credit  the  list  of  his  vocations  that  has  been  trans- 
mitted to  us.  He  was,  we  are  told,  a  physician,  law- 
yer, surveyor,  man  of  letters,  schoolmaster,  me- 
chanic, and  Methodist  preacher — besides  incident- 
ally running  a  farm.  After  his  first  years  in  the 
itinerant  ranks  he  retired  with  broken  health  to 
his  farm,  but  afterward  recuperated  sufiiciently  to 
return  to  the  harness,  and  after  a  year  in  Saint  Louis 
was  made  presiding  elder  of  the  Illinois  Circuit. 
Here  he  remained  till  overwork  again  mastered  a 
feeble  constitution,  and  he  sank  under  his  labors. 

Reserved  toward  strangers,  deliberate  in  manner, 


Some  of  the  Sowers  99 

till  aroused  by  the  pressure  of  emotion  or  the  de- 
mands of  his  calling,  thin,  with  pleasing  though  not 
remarkable  features  and  auburn  hair,  Beauchamp 
was  not  as  impressive  a  figure  as  some  of  his  associ- 
ates in  the  ministry.  Cartwright,  for  example,  by  his 
homeliness  and  brawn  attracted  attention,  as  Asbury 
did  by  his  almost  apostolic  presence,  and  Bascom, 
a  little  later,  by  his  personal  charm.  But  Beauchamp 
had  two  very  important  physical  qualifications  for 
his  work :  his  eyes,  hazel  in  color,  became  keen  and 
piercing  when  his  mind  was  aroused  by  the  presence 
of  an  audience  or  an  opponent,  and  his  voice  was 
capable  of  great  expression.  It  trembled  in  tender- 
ness and  rang  in  argument  or  denunciation.  Yet 
with  the  power  of  the  orator  he  always  exhibited 
the  intellectual  control  of  the  scholar.  Beauchamp's 
manner  of  preaching,  we  are  told,  was  not  ornate, 
but  rather  distinguished  on  ordinary  occasions  by 
simplicity.  His  discourses  were  not  calculated  to 
rouse  the  transient  emotions  of  an  audience  so  much 
as  to  produce  a  lasting  impression.  ''There  was 
seldom  a  shout  raised  in  the  assembly  under  his 
preaching,  but  always  strict  attention  paid  to  his 
discourses,  with  every  eye  fixed  upon  the  speaker 
and  frequently  the  people  all  bathed  in  tears,"  says 
one  biographer. 

William  Beauchamp  was  the  author  of  several 
books  that  had  a  wide  circulation  in  their  day,  and 


loo  Nation  Builders 

his  scholarly  attainments  were  recognized  by  a  large 
circle  of  his  contemporaries.  He  missed  an  election 
to  the  episcopacy  by  but  a  few  votes,  but,  as  it 
turned  out,  he  could  not  have  served  in  that  capacity, 
as  the  fatigue  of  attending  the  Conference  brought 
on  an  attack  of  illness  from  which  he  died  in  a  few 
weeks. 

This  man,  who  was  accounted  an  able  and  suc- 
cessful jMethodist  preacher,  presents  an  antithesis 
to  the  popular  idea  of  the  uncouth,  uneducated, 
rough-and-ready  shouter  ^^  ho  used  to  be  the  stock 
subject  of  newspaper  and  almanac  wit.  It  is  a 
great  mistake  to  suppose  that  all  of  the  men  who 
spent  their  lives  in  this  cause  were  rough  timber, 
fit  only  for  rough  purposes.  From  the  first,  when 
the  Wesleys  and  W'hitefield  came  out  of  Oxford 
with  the  message  of  the  cross,  there  have  ])ecn  men 
of  signal  ability  and  liberal  culture  in  the  ranks. 

One  of  the  most  marked  examples  of  a  union 
of  the  qualities  which  attract  people  of  all  classes 
was  to  be  found  in  Jesse  Lee,  a  Virginian  who  was 
ambiti(jus  to  evangelize  the  people  of  Boston.  More 
llian  a  Imndred  years  ago,  in  the  spring  of  1790, 
r.islinp  .\sl)ury  listened  to  his  importunity,  and  dis- 
patched him  foi-  his  self-chosen  field  of  labor.  Tie 
was  then  tliiily-two  years  old,  and  was  converted 
when  fifteen  years  old  under  one  of  the  few  evangel- 
ical Episcopal  ministers  that  his  native  state  could 


Some  of  the  Sowers  ioi 

boast  at  that  time.  Previous  to  his  invasion  of  Bos- 
ton young  Lee  had  accompanied  Bishop  Asbury  on  a 
tour  in  the  South,  and  there  won  the  respect  as  well 
as  the  regard  of  the  great  bishop,  who  realized 
that  there  was  in  his  companion  a  capacity  for 
extraordinary  success. 

The  idea  of  a  missionary  from  Virginia  to  Bos- 
ton! In  the  opinion  of  the  men  of  Boston  it  was 
monstrous  or  absurd ;  they  were  not  quite  sure 
whether  they  should  be  indignant  or  amused  at  such 
impudence. 

It  has  been  happily  said  of  Lee  that  his  education 
was  not  so  large  as  the  uses  which  he  made  of  it. 
He  was  a  man  of  much  more  than  the  ordinary 
height,  one  who  towered  above  other  men  physically, 
and  his  mental  stature  seemed  to  correspond  with 
his  bodily  presence.  Li  manner  he  had  the  polish 
which  was  once  thought  hardly  attainable  by  a  man 
born  outside  of  the  Old  Dominion,  and  his  ready 
wit  saved  him  from  discomfiture  in  many  a  novel 
situation.  An  old  lady  asked  him  if  he  had  had  a 
liberal  education.  That  was  in  Connecticut.  "Tol- 
erably liberal,"  was  the  reply;  "enough,  I  think,  to 
carry  me  through  the  country."  A  minister  of  an- 
other denomination  had  been  applied  to  by  Lee  for 
permission  to  preach  in  his  church.  But  was  he  a 
man  of  college  training?  Of  course  it  would  not 
do  for  the  pulpit  of  a  New  England  church  to  open 


102  Nation  Builders 

its  doors  to  one  who  lacked  the  hall-mark  of  schol- 
arship. So  the  resident  minister  slyly  tried  the  ap- 
plicant with  a  question  in  Greek.  Now,  it  happened 
that  Lee  did  not  know  any  Greek ;  but  he  was  for- 
tunately acquainted  with  some  North  Carolina 
Dutch  that  he  had  picked  up  while  in  the  South, 
and  he  gravely  replied  in  that.  His  interlocutor 
was  not  inclined  to  press  his  investigation  further, 
for  he  concluded  that  the  language  he  listened  to 
was  Hebrew,  in  which  he  himself  was  deficient. 

In  Connecticut,  according  to  the  historians  of  the 
church,  Lee  was  frequently  treated  with  rudeness, 
sometimes  amounting  to  violence.  The  clergymen 
were  inimical  to  him,  and  he  had  difficulty  in  finding 
any  church  to  receive  him ;  but  he  finally  managed, 
in  spite  of  the  opposition,  to  establish  a  circuit  which 
in  the  following  year  he  left  in  the  hands  of  Jacob 
Brush,  George  Roberts,  and  Daniel  Smith. 

Before  proceeding  to  Boston  he  explored  Massa- 
chusetts, Vermont,  and  New  Hampshire,  where  to 
his  great  delight  he  fell  in  with  another  of  the  rare 
spirits  of  that  day,  Freeborn  Garrettson.  Finally 
arriving  in  Boston,  Lee  found  it  impossible  to  ob- 
tain a  house  to  preach  in.  The  pulpits  with  one 
accord  closed  their  doors  against  him,  and  he  had 
no  means  with  which  to  procure  a  place  for  him- 
self. In  this  emergency  he  availed  himself  of  the 
liberty  alTurdcd  by  Boston  Common,  and  un  that 


Some  of  the  Sowers  103 

famous  green,  under  the  shade  of  a  hospitable  ehn, 
standing  upon  a  table  that  he  succeeded  in  borrow- 
ing, he  preached  his  first  sermon  to  a  Boston  audi- 
ence. The  audience  was  there.  A  few  gathered 
at  first,  drawn  by  curiosity  to  hear  this  big,  hand- 
some man,  whose  voice  rang  like  a  cornet.  Then  a 
crowd  assembled.  One  who  was  present  on  the 
first  occasion  said  afterward  that  it  was  a  common 
opinion  that  no  such  man  had  visited  New  England 
since  the  days  of  Whitefield.  Two  or  three  thou- 
sand people  heard  him  at  that  commencement  of  his 
Boston  ministry,  and  the  audiences  continued  to 
flock  to  the  old  elm  throughout  the  summer.  Finally 
he  built  in  Boston  a  Methodist  meetinghouse  with 
money  which  came,  in  part  at  least,  from  Virginia. 

Lee  preached  at  Lynn  and  established  there  the 
first  regular  Methodist  society  in  Massachusetts, 
which  from  February  to  May,  1791,  grew  to  sev- 
enty members.  In  1791  he  was  appointed  elder 
of  the  New  England  District  and  assigned  to  Litch- 
field. With  him  were  eleven  circuit  preachers,  cov- 
ering one  district  and  six  circuits,  all  established 
in  the  short  time  since  Lee  had  been  sent  by  Asbury 
into  the  Eastern  states.  The  following  year  the 
first  Conference  in  New  England  was  held  at  Lynn. 
Shortly  after  that  extensive  revivals  were  reported 
throughout  the  region  in  which  Elder  Lee  had  la- 
bored.   Rainor  had  a  good  story  to  tell  of  awaken- 


104  Nation  Builders 

ings  on  the  Hartford  Circuit,  and  the  work  spread 
as  far  as  Albany,  in  New  York  State.  That  year 
showed  a  gain  of  about  nine  hundred  souls  for  the 
new  Conference,  the  total  membership  being  one 
thousand  three  hundred  and  fifty-eight. 

Let  no  one  pass  the  preceding-  paragraph  over  as 
a  dry  statement  of  uninteresting  figures.  To  read 
between  the  lines  of  such  meager  data  as  Confer- 
ence reports  often  give  us  will  show  by  what  un- 
tiring zeal,  what  almost  superhuman  energy,  the 
jMethodist  Church  pushed  forward  to  occupy  the 
land.  The  evangelist  was  a  sort  of  flying  wedge, 
and  no  sooner  had  he  made  the  slightest  impression 
upon  the  district  assigned  him  than  the  reenforce- 
ments  were  flung  in  to  his  support  with  an  energy 
and  generalship  that  were  admirable.  Had  Bishop 
Asbury  been  a  military  leader  instead  of  head  shep- 
herd in  the  Methodist  Church,  his  genius  would 
have  won  him  a  high  place  among  the  famous  com- 
manders of  history. 


CHAPTER  V 

From  Cabix  to  Camp  Meeting 

The  American  pioneer  of  1800  was  a  poorer  man 
in  all  things  that  we  consider  essential  to  life  than 
is  the  meanest  "tarheel"  that  drags  out  his  existence 
in  a  slab  shanty  in  the  Carolina  pine  belt  to-day. 
The  least  prosperous  American  of  the  twentieth 
century  can  sometimes  at  least  command  the  use 
of  matches,  the  sight  of  a  newspaper,  the  care  of 
a  physician,  the  service  of  the  postal  system,  or 
the  protection  of  a  court  of  law,  not  one  of 
which  advantages  came  within  the  reach  or  the 
knowledge  of  any  of  those  who  broke  a  path  into 
the  wilderness  toward  the  Mississippi  ten  decades 
ago.  The  barrenness  of  the  lives  of  the  pioneers 
can  hardly  be  conceived  by  the  reader  of  this  gen- 
eration. The  home  of  the  frontiersman  was  a  rough 
shack  of  logs,  daubed  with  clay,  and  often  roofed 
with  bark  till  shingles,  laboriously  made  by  hand, 
could  be  prepared.  No  cave  man's  den  nor  bush- 
man's  hut  could  be  more  barren  of  ornament  than 
such  a  cabin.  The  path  that  led  to  its  door  was  a 
trail  seldom  trodden  by  other  feet  than  those  of  its 
occupants,  and  the  wind  that  whistled  through  the 


io6  Nation  Builders 

chinks  of  the  walls  or  drove  the  snow  through  the 
imglazed  windows  commonly  brought  no  other 
sounds  than  the  howl  of  the  wolves  or  the  wail  of 
the  panther. 

Let  us  imagine  a  state  of  society  in  which  each 
household  must  depend  upon  its  own  members  for 
all  the  advantages  commonly  belonging  to  com- 
munal life.  It  is  true,  as  will  be  noticed  elsewhere 
in  these  pages,  that  the  frontier  settlers  were  fre- 
c[uently  driven  to  cluster  in  small  groups  of  two 
or  three  or  even  half  a  dozen  shanties,  which  became 
the  nuclei  of  future  settlements,  but  it  is  also  true 
that  even  in  these  embryo  hamlets  there  was  rarely 
an  attempt  to  infringe  upon  absolute  personal  lib- 
erty of  action  by  any  form  or  pretense  of  social  law. 

The  frontiersman  expected  to  defend  himself  and 
his  family  from  aggression,  to  avenge  real  or  imag- 
ined injuries,  and  to  fight  out  his  own  quarrels 
without  recourse  to  any  organized  system  of  social 
protection.  It  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  go  back 
a  century  for  illustrations  of  the  evil  results  of  this 
mode  of  life.  Its  survival  in  the  wilder  regions  of 
the  Southwest  is  still  marked  by  the  blood  feud, 
or  vendetta,  by  which  the  settlement  of  fierce  ani- 
mosities is  left  by  popular  consent  to  the  members 
of  the  families  concerned.  The  pioneer  was  in  all 
matters  that  affected  his  own  safety,  or  even  his 
own  convenience,  judge,  jury,  and  police  in  one  per- 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         107 

son.  If  he  acted  in  concert  with  his  neighbors  it 
was  under  the  pressure  of  some  immediate  and  ex- 
traordinary emergency,  and  such  associations  sel- 
dom became  permanent.  If  it  chanced  that  several 
cabins  were  clustered  together  for  greater  protec- 
tion against  Indian  foes  they  were  sometimes  sur- 
rounded by  a  palisade  or  other  defense  of  logs,  and 
under  the  stress  of  a  common  danger  the  long  rifles 
cracked  side  by  side. 

Education  under  those  circumstances  meant  at 
best  the  barest  rudiments  of  book  knowledge,  im- 
parted at  the  mother's  knee.  Schools  were  abso- 
lutely unknown  upon  the  frontier,  and  even  the 
larger  settlements  were  frequently  innocent  of  any 
attempt  to  instruct  the  young.  What  material  things 
a  man  possessed  were  the  products  of  his  own  or  his 
wife's  skill  in  manufacture.  The  house,  furniture, 
utensils,  clothing,  food — all  they  had  or  used  were 
of  their  own  making,  raising,  or  killing.  If  a  man 
wanted  clothing  he  killed  a  beast  and  prepared  its 
fur  or  its  hide  for  his  use.  To  realize  what  such 
clothing  meant  let  anyone  take  even  the  softest 
buckskin,  dressed  without  mechanical  appliances, 
and  wear  it  next  the  skin  after  it  has  once  or  twice 
been  wet  by  rain  or  snow  and  dried  in  hard  creases 
and  ridges.  Such  garments  could  only  be  used  by 
people  whose  bodies  were  inured  to  the  hardening 
processes  of  a  life  of  constant  exposure.    As  in  the 


io8  Nation  Builders 

case  of  savage  tribes,  the  weak  died  young,  and  the 
survivors  were  the  progenitors  of  a  race  of  uncom- 
mon stature  and  physical  hardness.  The  women 
spun  and  wove  wool  or  flax  into  coarse  fabrics  to 
fashion  their  rude  garments,  and  when  occasion 
required  they  could  aid  their  husbands  or  brothers 
with  ax  and  rifle.  The  pioneer  settlers  fought  with 
savages  for  a  foothold  on  their  land ;  fought  the 
forest  and  the  soil  for  a  bare  subsistence;  fought 
their  fellows  for  such  advantages  as  they  could 
hope  to  gain ;  and,  generally,  did  not  know 
enough  to  comprehend  that  they  were  ignorant  and 
poor. 

The  cotton  gin  was  not  introduced;  the  butcher 
and  the  grocer  had  not  arrived  upon  the  scene ;  the 
art  of  lighting  a  fire  had  not  passed  the  elementary 
stage  of  flint  and  steel,  and  if  a  man  lacked  these 
necessary  adjuncts  to  cabin  life  he  toiled  for  a  potful 
of  fire  to  his  nearest  neighbor,  or,  lacking-  a  neigh- 
bor, he  shivered  and  starved.  Sometimes  faint 
echoes  reached  the  frontiersman  of  a  world  some- 
where beyond  his  mountains  and  forests.  He  knew 
that  there  were  in  the  world  larger  affairs  than 
those  that  employed  him.  something  greater  than 
his  meager  and  soul-starving  routine  of  border  life, 
and  that  there  were  larger  men  who  managed  those 
more  important  matters ;  but  it  did  not  occur  to  him 
that  he  had  anv  interests  in  common  with  those  far- 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         109 

distant  men  or  that  their  rise  or  fall  could  matter 
to  him. 

The  pioneer  settlers  formed  the  raw  material  for 
the  making  of  new  states,  but  they  were  not  in 
any  true  sense  state  builders  till  an  influence  came 
to  them  and  an  idea  was  planted  and  cultivated 
among  them  by  men  whose  thought,  whose  stand- 
ards of  conscience,  whose  conceptions  of  duty  and 
responsibility,  of  law  and  morality,  of  life  in  all 
its  wonderful  meaning,  were  absolutely  new  to 
them.  It  was  this  new  influence  that  moved  from 
cabin  to  cabin,  that  was  carried  like  an  endless  cord 
through  all  the  intricate  ways  of  forest  and  moun- 
tain, of  valley  and  river,  till  it  bound  into  one  sym- 
pathetic body  the  widely  segregated  units  of  that 
strangely  hidden  population. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  earlier  the  settler  had 
himself  perhaps  seen  something  of  the  conflict  that 
at  its  close  had  left  thirteen  worn  and  impoverished 
colonies  free  from  British  control,  but  not  yet  con- 
scious of  the  meaning  or  the  potentiality  of  the 
liberty  they  had  achieved.  Through  the  anteroom  of 
a  loose  and  imperfect  confederation  the  people  of  the 
land  were  to  go  forward,  like  wondering,  irresolute 
children,  into  a  union  of  sovereign  states.  The  con- 
cept of  a  federal  government  had  not  become  habit- 
ual to  more  than  a  respectable  minority  of  the 
people,  even  in  the  larger  cities  and  towns.     The 


I  TO  Nation  Builders 

settlements,  far  removed  from  the  seaboard  and 
from  one  another,  were  without  means  of  commu- 
nication, were  out  of  touch  with  the  world  and  its 
thought;  and  the  pioneer,  fighting  his  lonely  battle 
for  existence  at  the  very  borders  of  Christendom, 
stood  much  nearer  in  knowledge  to  his  savage 
vis-a-vis  than  to  the  associates  of  Hamilton  and 
Jefferson. 

It  was  just  at  that  point  that  the  great  though 
unrealized  danger  to  the  future  of  the  Southern  and 
Western  states  lay.  Not  the  men  of  tlie  seaboard 
cities,  where  law  and  order  were  recognized,  where 
education  was  fostered  and  religion  had  won  its 
converts,  but  the  untaught,  lawless,  primitive  men 
of  the  settlements  were  to  leave  their  impress  upon 
western  Virginia,  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  the  vast 
continent  beyond. 

Never  was  isolation  more  complete.  By  the  year 
1800  a  population  of  over  three  hundred  thousand 
souls  had  drifted  with  the  tributaries  of  the  Ohio 
or  sifted  through  the  ravines  of  the  Cumberland 
Mountains  .on  the  trail  of  Boone  into  the  forests  and 
the  fertile  valleys  of  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  and 
had  dropped  out  of  sight  for  the  most  part  as  com- 
|)letely  as  though  they  had  marched  into  the  sea. 
To  the  majority  of  them  no  post  rider  ever  brought 
tidings  of  the  outer  world  or  carried  their  messages. 
No   news    sheet    ever    reached    them.      No    public 


From  Cauin  to  Camp  Meeting         hi 

speaker  ever  drew  them  together  except  for  the  rare 
occasions  of  worship. 

It  is  so  necessary  to  understand  the  completeness 
of  that  isolation  from  the  world's  great  interests 
and  the  growing  sentiment  of  national  life  in  order 
to  appreciate  the  vast  service  performed  by  any  in- 
telligent agent  who  should  at  more  or  less  regular 
intervals  visit  and  instruct  those  outlying  units  of 
population,  that  we  have  been  somewhat  particular 
and  minute  in  our  description  of  earlier  frontier 
life.  A  committee  of  Congress,  reporting  in  1800 
upon  the  Northwest  Territory,  which  it  was  then 
proposed  to  divide  into  three  prospective  states, 
made  the  astounding  statement  that  "in  the  three 
Western  countries  there  has  been  but  one  court  hav- 
ing cognizance  of  crimes  for  five  years,  and  the 
immunity  which  oiTenders  experience  attracts,  as  to 
an  asylum,  the  most  vile  and  abandoned  criminals, 
and  at  the  same  time  deters  useful  and  virtuous 
citizens  from  making  settlement  in  such  a  society." 

Peter  Cartwright,  from  whom  we  quote  more  at 
length  in  another  place,  described  his  father's  home 
in  Logan  County,  Kentucky,  as  a  haunt  for  refugees 
from  justice,  so  that  the  place  was  called  "Rogues' 
Harbor."  He  enumerates  a  delightful  society  of 
"murderers,  horse  thieves,  highway  robbers,  and 
counterfeiters."  Two  missionaries,  traveling  the 
country  from  western  Pennsylvania  westward  to  the 


112  Nation  Builders 

Mississippi  and  southward  to  New  Orleans,  in  1813, 
reported  groups  of  population  scattered  over  large 
areas  of  land,  but  no  church  nor  any  preacher. 

Elsewhere  we  have  discussed  the  sources  of  popu- 
lation that  led  to  the  building  of  the  country  that 
up  to  1830  was  the  West.  For  many  years  before 
the  great  areas  under  consideration  were  of  the 
slightest  importance  as  states  the  people — such  peo- 
ple as  we  have  described — were  pouring  into  them. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  that  the  population 
of  a  country  does  not  of  itself  affect  its  political  or 
social  standing.  The  then  frontier  settlements  of 
America  were  merely  unworked  lumps  of  humanity, 
waiting  for  the  leaven  that  was  in  an  incredibly 
short  time  to  permeate  them  with  life. 

In  many  sections  of  the  Western  country,  as 
already  noticed,  a  number  of  pioneers  built  near 
together,  for  protection  against  the  attacks  of  sav- 
age foes.  Sometimes  a  common  fort,  palisade,  or 
blockhouse  added  to  the  security  of  such  a  com- 
munity. The  Indian  was  certainly  the  most  active 
agent  in  forcing  the  solitary  pioneers  into  comn'iuni- 
ties,  but  there  his  services  as  a  benefactor  ceased. 
The  community  simply  multiplied  the  vice  and  the 
ignorance  of  the  individuals  that  composed  it,  if 
they  chanced  to  be  vicious  and  ignorant.  Drunken- 
ness increased  under  the  influence  of  conviviality, 
and  crimes  followed  drunkenness. 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         113 

That  is  not  a  pleasing  picture  of  the  early  settler 
of  the  American  frontier,  but  it  is  the  only  kind  of 
a  picture  that  observant  men  have  left  of  him.  His 
manners  were  as  uncouth  as  his  morals  were  un- 
wholesome, and  altogether,  divested  of  the  softening 
tints  of  time  and  distance,  he  must  have  been  as 
unattractive  as  the  average  squatter  on  the  outskirts 
of  civilization.  Nevertheless  there  was  good  seed 
in  that  planting;  good  qualities  that  lay  dormant 
under  the  weight  of  untoward  circumstances,  good 
faculties  that  belonged  with  the  splendid  physique 
of  the  men  and  the  robust  health  of  the  women, 
waited  only  for  an  awakening  touch. 

Into  some  such  typical  exposition  of  squalor  and 
poverty  a  lone  rider  on  a  jaded  nag  rode  one  day. 
His  dress  was  that  of  any  other  frontiersman, 
partly  homespun  and  partly  leather  or  fur;  his  hair 
hung  long  from  the  edge  of  a  coonskin  cap,  and 
his  flapping  saddlebags  carried  all  his  worldly  pos- 
sessions. In  the  place  of  a  rifle  he  carried  a  Bible, 
and  he  came  singing  a  song. 

Never  in  any  page  of  history  was  there  a  more 
complete  antithesis  than  that  between  the  circuit 
rider,  on  fire  with  zeal,  alive  with  a  new,  unfathom- 
able life,  and  jubilant  in  the  possession  of  a  great 
secret  that  it  was  his  mission  to  impart,  and  the 
ignorant,  brawny,  inquisitive  people  that  mingled 
with  their  often  suspicious  greeting  a  furtive  sus- 


114  Nation  Builders 

picion  of  his  errand,,  and  were  not  infrequently  eager 
to  try  physical  conclusions  with  him  before  they 
would  listen  to  the  message  he  brought.  There 
were  three  things  that  the  Methodist  circuit  rider 
never  omitted.  He  prayed  with  his  host  or  hostess, 
sang  a  hymn,  and,  if  possible,  added  a  word  of 
exhortation;  he  unfolded  his  little  stock  of  tracts 
and  hymn  books  and  tried  to  dispose  of  some  of 
them;  and  he  carefully  inquired  about  the  nearest 
neighbors  and  acquainted  himself  with  all  there  was 
to  know  concerning  them.  Added  to  these  essential 
features  of  the  programme  were  the  always  welcome 
news  of  the  outside  world. 

Seated  by  the  open  hearth  with  the  family  uf  his 
host  gathered  around  him  and  eagerly  drinking  in 
his  words,  he  told  of  the  marvelous  things  he  had 
seen  with  his  own  eyes  in  that  great  city  of  Phil- 
adelphia where  he  had  attended  a  General  Confer- 
ence. He  described  the  leaders  of  the  church — 
l^^rancis  Asbury  foremost — and  spoke  re\-crcnlly  of 
the  work  they  were  doing,  unconsciously,  perhaps, 
bringing  the  far-distant  bounds  of  the  country  to- 
gether within  such  a  comprehensive  circle  as  his 
hearers  had  never  before  imagined.  Vvom  such 
themes  he  probably  drifted  to  more  secular  ones, 
telling  who  knows  what  startling  items  of  recent 
intelligence.  They  knew  tlic  name  of  Washington 
c\cn  in  the  remotest  cabin  in  the  (leei)est  wilderness, 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         115 

and  they  were  moved  by  something-  hke  grief  to 
learn  that  he  had  breathed  his  last  at  his  beautiful 
Mount  Vernon ;  nor  did  they  lose  a  word  of  the  tale 
of  his  obsequies. 

The  differences  of  Hamilton  and  Adams  with 
Jefferson  and  his  party  opened  another  world  of 
ideas,  brought  the  lands  over-seas  nearer,  and  de- 
fined America  as  a  land  with  individual  life,  as 
opposed  or  contrasted  with  the  life  of  other  lands. 
The  common  interests  of  the  people  of  America 
was  a  new  and  absorbing  story. 

When  the  budget  of  strange  tidings  disclosed 
such  marvels  as  the  voyage  of  Fulton's  Clermont 
down  the  Hudson,  breathing  fire  and  smoke,  or  the 
sad  tragedy  at  Weehawken,  when  the  great  federal 
leader  fell  before  the  pistol  of  Aaron  Burr,  who  can 
picture  the  deep  absorption  of  listeners  to  whom  the 
horizon  of  life  was  being  widened  for  perhaps  the 
first  time.  What  the  men  of  Philadelphia,  Balti- 
more, Boston,  or  New  York  were,  what  they  strove 
for  and  stood  for,  was  novel  refreshment  for  starved 
minds.  What  the  men  of  the  nearest  settlement, 
fifty  miles  away,  were  doing  was  almost  as  strange. 

Candles  were  an  unknown  luxury,  the  place  of 
which  was  filled  by  a  light-wood  knot  stuck  in  the 
chimney  flank ;  and  such  a  torch  must  have  lighted 
many  a  strange  group,  of  which  the  traveling 
preacher  was  the  center. 


ii6  Nation  Builders 

In  imagination  we  go  back  six  centuries  to  pic- 
ture amid  different  surroundings  and  under  differ- 
ent skies  a  similarly  ignorant  company.  Lord  and 
lady,  thrall  and  franklin,  gathering  close  to  hear  the 
marvelous  tales  of  some  palmer  who  had  seen 
strange  countries,  or  a  minstrel  who  could  recount 
strange  tales  in  rhythm,  to  the  accompaniment  of 
a  harp.  The  itinerant  preacher  was  the  palmer  and 
the  minstrel  in  one.  He  was  the  teacher,  the  news- 
monger, the  living  epistle  calling  men  to  a  higher 
and  more  satisfying  life,  the  link  between  scattered 
settlements  and  isolated  cabins,  and  the  bringer  and 
singer  of  songs  that  were  learned  and  remembered 
and  sung  long  after  the  recollection  of  spoken  words 
was  indistinct.  The  songs  learned  in  Cane  Ridge 
were  the  same  that  were  repeated  in  Boone;  they 
swelled  from  the  clearings  on  the  Licking  and  rolled 
along  the  bluffs  of  the  Cumberland,  ^^'hen  the  peo- 
ple assembled,  under  the  influence  and  the  impetus 
of  a  new  faith,  to  praise  God  for  the  hope  of  sal- 
vation they  all  sang  the  same  songs.  In  another 
chapter  we  will  speak  somewhat  more  fully  of  those 
songs  of  Zion,  that  had  an  incalculable  influence 
in  shaping  the  destinies  of  a  people. 

The  great  camp  meetings  that  early  became  a 
part  of  the  religious  life  of  the  backwoods  were 
a  necessary  outgrowth  of  the  itinerancy.  To  a 
congregation  co\-cring  twenty-five  hundred  square 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         117 

miles,  and  possessing  no  church  building-,  the  open 
aisles  of  the  forest  were  the  only  recourse.  Every 
family  in  which  an  itinerant  Methodist  preacher 
gained  a  foothold  became  at  once  an  important  part 
of  his  flock,  never  afterward  to  be  neglected  or 
forgotten,  and  never  suffered  to  be  neglectful  or  to 
forget.  When,  having  made  the  rounds  and  the 
acquaintance  of  every  settler  within  his  circuit,  the 
preacher  announced  meetings  at  the  most  central 
points,  he  insisted  that  every  member  of  his  flock 
within  a  specified  radius  should  be  present,  and  he 
made  it  clear  to  them  from  the  outset  that  the  society 
was  theirs  and  claimed  their  support.  There  was 
never  a  hint  that  any  brother  or  sister  was  to  be 
carried  to  the  skies  on  flowery  beds  of  ease.  No 
drone  was  encouraged  in  those  hives. 

Leaving  aside  for  the  moment  the  spiritual  aspect 
of  meetings  at  central  places  and  camp  meetings  to 
which  a  larger  neighborhood  was  summoned,  we 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  only  less  important 
social  side  of  such  gatherings.  For  the  first  time 
in  their  lives  the  backwoodsmen  met  a  congregation 
of  strangers,  and  met  them  upon  a  common  ground, 
that  induced  sympathy  and  interest  in  their  lives, 
their  ideas,  and  their  prospects. 

As  strangers  they  came  from  long  distances  to 
clasp  one  another's  hands  and  depart  as  brothers, 
and  ever  afterward  to  follow  with  interest  the  un- 


ii8  Nation  Builders 

folding  of  fortunes,  the  happiness  or  the  grief  of 
men  and  women  who  had  till  then  been  alien  to 
them. 

The  camp  meeting,  which  in  some  sections  of  the 
country,  in  a  scarcely  modified  form,  has  lasted  to  the 
present  day,  bore  about  the  same  relation  to  a  stated 
appointment  to  preach  that  the  mobilization  of  a  state 
militia  used  to  hold  to  a  village  train  band.  After 
families  had  been  visited  and  societies  formed  and 
meetings  held  to  clinch  the  work  of  private  exhorta- 
tion, a  great  concourse  of  people  from  an  area  often 
covering  parts  of  several  states  were  summoned  by 
word  of  mouth  to  attend  a  general  muster.  The 
place  chosen  for  such  a  meeting  was  often  in  the 
great  level  wood  spaces,  clear  from  underbrush  or 
obstruction,  which  were  once  a  feature  of  the  South- 
western land.  Toward  such  a  rendezvous,  as  the 
advertised  day  drew  near,  the  settlers  approached 
by  twos  and  threes,  by  companies,  by  platoons  and 
regiments.  Like  rivulets  in  the  mountains  that  flow 
into  brooks  and  these  again  form  rivers,  so  the  drops 
of  those  great  floods  of  population  came  together. 
Concentrating  toward  one  point,  it  sometimes  hap- 
pened lliat  wliolc  counties  in  Kentucky,  Tennessee, 
and  Ohio  w eic  depopulated,  llic  inhabitants  moving 
steadily  toward  the  center,  where,  up(jn  arrival, 
tach  man  should  buikl  wlial  shelter  he  could  for 
his  family,  and  .>3\\ell  a  uiullilude  such  as  few  had 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         itq 

ever  seen  or  imagined.     Out  of  the  woods,  across 
the  clearings,  by  tens,  b}''  hundreds,  by  thousands, 
on  foot,  on  horseback,  or  in  rude  carts,  singing  as 
they  came,  the  newly  enlisted  cohorts  of  Methodism 
brought  their  individual  experiences  to  cast  them 
into  the  treasury  of  a  great  common  faith.    Never 
before  in  the  history  of  the  world  had  such  congre- 
gations been  gathered.    Never  before  had  they  been 
possible.    It  is  not  safe  to  say  that  no  other  agency 
could  have  brought  them  together,  but  it  is  a  his- 
toric fact  that  no  other  cause  ever  did.     Not  one 
of   the   great   political    demonstrations    for   which 
America  has  been  famous,  not  even  the  great  meet- 
ings that  marked  the  controversial  triumphs  of  Lin- 
coln and  Douglas,  ever  did  in  this  one  respect  what 
many  of  the  great  camp  meetings  of  a  century  ago 
accomplished.     Twenty  thousand  men  and  women 
of  the  frontier  gathered  in  some  of  those  assemblies. 
Some  of  them  had  taken  days  or  even  weeks  to  reach 
the  ground.    They  had  traveled  over  lands  that  were 
strange  to  them,  had  slipped  down  rivers  that  were 
new,  had  journeyed  in  company  with  chance  com- 
panions whose  faces  and  ways  were  alike  unfamiliar. 
They  gathered  as  settlers  from  the  Kanawha  or 
the  Muskingum ;  they  returned  home  citizens  of  the 
Union. 

Among  the  formative  influences  which  students 
of  national  history  must  measure  there  has  been 


120  Nation  Builders 

none  more  prompt  and  far-reaching  in  its  effect 
upon  the  character  of  the  repubHc  than  the  Meth- 
odist camp  meeting. 

James  McGready,  whose  name  should  receive 
perpetual  honor  among  Christians  of  all  denomina- 
tions, was  a  devoted  Presbyterian  minister,  who  had 
come  out  from  the  East  with  a  little  handful  of 
Scotch-Irish  Presbyterians  from  Pennsylvania  and 
settled  in  Logan  County,  Kentucky.  To  his  zeal 
has  been  attributed  the  first  signs  of  the  religious 
awakening  in  Kentucky.  In  1799  the  brothers  Mc- 
Gee,  William  and  John,  one  a  Methodist  and  the 
other  a  Presbyterian,  came  together  preaching  the 
gospel  in  that  countr3\  and  soon  were  followed  by 
great  congregations  who  gathered  from  far  and 
near  to  listen  to  their  preaching.  The  camp  meet- 
ings that  thus  began  in  Logan  County  and  in  that 
part  of  the  state  were  soon  talked  of  throughout 
the  border  whercx'er  men  came  together.  The  best 
account  of  the  Logan  County  revival  is  that  given 
l)y  Barton  Warren  Stone,  preacher  at  Cane  Ridge, 
who  was  moved  by  the  astonishing  news  to  go  and 
see  for  himself  what  was  transpiring.  Ilis  account 
is  in  part  as  follows : 

"There  on  the  edge  of  a  prairie  in  Logan  County. 
Kentucky,  the  multitudes  came  together,  and  con- 
tinued for  a  num1)cr  of  days  and  nights  encamped 
on  the  ground,  during  which  time  worship  was  car- 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         121 

ried  on  in  some  part  of  the  encampment.  The  scene 
was  new  to  me  and  passing  strange.  It  baffled  de- 
scription. Many,  very  many,  fell  down  as  men  slain 
in  battle,  and  continued  for  hours  together  in  an 
apparently  breathless  and  motionless  state,  some- 
times for  a  few  minutes  reviving  and  exhibiting 
symptoms  of  life  by  a  deep  groan  or  a  piercing 
shriek  or  a  prayer  for  mercy  fervently  uttered. 
After  lying  there  for  hours  they  obtained  deliver- 
ance. The  gloomy  cloud  that  had  covered  their 
faces  seemed  gradually  and  visibly  to  disappear,  and 
hope,  in  smiles,  brightened  into  joy.  They  would 
rise,  shouting  deliverance,  and  would  then  address 
the  surrounding  multitude  in  language  truly  elo- 
quent and  impressive.  With  astonishment  did  I 
hear  men,  women,  and  children  declaring  the  won- 
derful works  of  God  and  the  glorious  mysteries  of 
the  gospel." 

The  recital  of  the  scenes  in  Logan  County  deeply 
affected  all  of  the  Western  people  who  heard  of  it, 
but  the  course  of  the  emotional  storm  center,  cyclonic 
as  it  was  in  swiftness  and  power,  moved  eastward, 
toward  Cane  Ridge,  in  Bourbon  County.  The  peo- 
ple who  listened  to  Mr.  Stone  with  rapt  and  some- 
times tearful  interest  soon  found  themselves  in  the 
midst  of  a  scene  even  more  thrilling  and  remember- 
able.  The  greatest  religious  revival  of  modern 
times,  greatest  not  only  in  its  immediate  religious 


122  Nation  Builders 

effect,  but  in  the  scope  and  vitality  of  its  after  influ- 
ence, had  fairly  commenced  and  was  daily  gaining 
headway.  Stone  again  has  left  us  a  graphic  record 
of  the  occurrences  at  Cane  Ridge: 

"The  roads  were  crowded  with  wagons,  carriages, 
horses,  and  footmen,  moving  to  the  solemn  camp. 
It  was  judged  by  military  men  on  the  ground  that 
between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand  persons  were 
assembled.  Four  or  five  preachers  spoke  at  the 
same  time  in  different  parts  of  the  encampment 
without  confusion.  .  .  .  \Vq  all  engaged  in  singing 
the  same  songs,  all  united  in  prayer,  all  preached 
the  same  things.  .  .  .  The  numbers  converted  will 
be  known  only  in  eternity.  Many  things  transpired 
at  the  meeting  which  were  so  much  like  miracles 
that  they  had  the  same  effect  as  miracles  upon  un- 
believers. By  them  many  were  convinced  that  Jesus 
was  the  Christ  and  were  persuaded  to  submit  to  him. 
This  meeting  continued  six  or  seven  days  and  nights, 
and  would  have  continued  longer,  but  food  for  the 
sustenance  of  such  a  multitude  failed.  To  this  meet- 
ing had  come  many  from  Ohio  and  other  distant 
parts.  They  returned  home  and  diffused  the  same 
spirit  in  their  respective  neighborhoods." 

We  see  by  this  account,  through  llio  controlled 
and  measured  terms  of  which  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  narrator  l^rcaks  in  spite  of  himself,  the  impres- 
sion made  l)y  the  Logan  County  and  the  Bourljon 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         123 

County  gatherings  upon  the  mind  of  a  Presbyterian. 
Kentucky  has  been  from  its  early  days  a  stronghold 
of  the  Presbyterians  in  America,  and  no  clearer 
proof  is  needed  of  the  vigor  and  fervor  of  their 
ministry  than  the  evidence  we  have  of  their  agency 
in  commencing  the  revival  of  1800  and  contributing 
to  the  establishment  of  camp  meetings.  It  is  a  fact 
that  the  Presbyterian  and  other  ministers,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Methodists,  soon  withdrew 
from  any  active  part  in  the  great  open-air  gather- 
ings that  have  since  become  so  closely  associated 
with  Methodism  and  were  for  years  one  of  the 
principal  agencies  in  its  upbuilding.  William  Burke's 
narrative  of  the  great  Cane  Ridge  revival  gives  still 
another  point  of  view  and  must  not  be  omitted : 

"Our  next  quarterly  meeting  was  for  Lexington 
Circuit,  at  Jesse  Griffiths,  Scott  County.  On  Sat- 
urday we  had  some  indications  of  a  good  work. 
On  Saturday  night  we  had  preaching  in  different 
parts  of  the  circuit,  which  at  that  time  was  the 
custom.  .  .  .  On  Sunday  morning  they  came  in 
companies,  singing  and  shouting  on  the  road.  .  .  . 
The  work  spread  now  into  the  several  circuits. 
Salt  River  and  Shelby  were  visited,  and  Danville 
shared  the  blessing.  The  Presbyterian  Church 
caught  the  fire.  Congregations  were  universally 
wakened  up:  McNamer's  congregation  on  Cabin 
Creek,  Barton  Stone's  at  Cane  Ridge,  Reynolds's 


124  Nation  Builders 

near  Ruddells  Station  and  Paris,  Rev.  Mr.  Lisle's 
at  Salem,  Mr.  Rankin's  at  Walnut  Hill,"  etc. 

He  tells  how  the  work  extended  into  other  coun- 
ties, to  Ohio,  to  remote  posts  on  the  frontier.  A 
meeting  was  "published"  at  Cane  Ridge,  and  a  whole 
population  turned  out  to  attend : 

"On  Sunday  morning,  when  I  came  on  the 
ground,  ...  I  fixed  my  stand  in  the  open  sun,  with 
an  umbrella  affixed  to  a  long  pole  and  held  over  my 
head  by  Brother  Hugh  Barnes.  I  commenced  read- 
ing a  hymn  with  an  audible  voice,  and  by  the  time 
we  concluded  we  had  around  us,  by  a  fair  calcula- 
tion, ten  thousand  people.  .  .  .  Toward  evening  I 
pitched  the  only  tent  on  the  ground.  Having  been 
accustomed  to  travel  in  the  wilderness,  I  soon  had 
a  tent  constructed  out  of  poles  and  pawpaw  bushes. 
Here  I  remained  Sunday  night  and  Monday  night, 
and  during  the  time  there  was  not  a  single  moment's 
cessation,  but  the  work  went  on,  and  old  and  young, 
men,  women,  and  children,  were  converted  to  God. 
It  was  estimated  that  on  Sunday  and  Sunday  night 
there  were  twenty  thousand  people  on  the  ground. 
They  had  come  from  far  and  near,  from  all  parts 
of  Kentucky,  some  from  Tennessee  and  from  north 
of  the  Ohio  River,  so  that  tidings  of  the  Cane  Ridge 
meeting  were  carried  to  almost  every  corner  of  the 
country,  and  the  holy  fire  spread  in  nil  directions." 

Even  William  Burke  seems  not  to  have  seen  the 


From  Cabin  to  Camp  Meeting         125 

great  significance  of  this  work  in  any  other  than 
a  reHgious  light.  Was  he  obHvious  to  the  fact  that 
he  was  recording  a  process  of  state  building?  or 
did  that  fact  to  his  zealous  mind  seem  small  beside 
the  other?  Twenty  thousand  people  gathered  from 
the  four  quarters  of  the  compass  at  the  call  of  the 
voice.  Twenty  thousand  people  went  again  to  their 
wilderness  homes  with  a  new  conception  of  their 
relationship  to  other  men.  Twenty  thousand  units 
of  population  had  mastered  the  idea  of  Union, 

This  work,  repeated  again  and  again,  \vas  as  un- 
exampled in  its  effect  as  it  has  been  unrecognized. 
Even  if  the  labor  of  the  preachers  had  achieved  no 
higher  result  than,  this  it  would  not  have  been 
wasted.  Viewed  from  a  purely  political  standpoint, 
it  would  have  been  a  tremendous  success;  but,  as 
we  have  had  occasion  to  point  out,  the  conversion 
of  lawless  people  into  law-abiding  citizens  was  a 
constant  corollary  of  the  camp  meeting  and  the  re- 
vival service. 

To  the  making  of  the  Union  the  men  in  whose 
piety,  zeal,  and  discretion  Francis  Asbury  trusted, 
who  followed  Burke  into  Ohio  and  penetrated  the 
wilderness  with  Kobler  and  Poythress,  Axley  and 
Blackman  and  Cummins,  contributed  very  largely 
— as  broadly  and  effectually  as  any  single  agency, 
because  their  influence  alone  in  their  day  could  draw 
or  did  draw  the  people  to  a  common  center  in  a 


126  Nation  Builders 

common  interest.  If  we  seem  to  reiterate  this  truth 
unnecessarily  let  it  be  said  in  reply  that  we  con- 
ceive it  to  be  one  of  the  most  important  historical 
facts  of  which  American  annals  afford  us  any 
knowledge.  The  Methodist  itinerants  went  among 
the  people  with  a  bond  that  drew  strangers  together 
into  a  close  fellowship,  and  created  sympathy  be- 
tween individuals  remote  from  each  other  in  a  geo- 
graphical sense;  they  also  afforded  a  reason  why 
people  of  different  neighborhoods,  counties,  or  even 
states,  should  meet  with  a  common  purpose  and 
depart  fired  by  a  common  enthusiasm.  We  have  not 
found  that  any  other  agency  in  the  early  days  of  the 
republic  performed  this  or  any  similar  service. 


CHAPTER  VI 
Frontier  Women  and  Preachers'  Wives 

When  the  saga  of  the  old  Methodist  circuits  is 
fully  written,  which  is  not  likely  to  be  possible  till 
"the  leaves  of  the  judgment  book  unfold,"  perhaps 
the  tenderest  and  finest  pages  of  that  record  will 
be  devoted  to  the  women  who  lived  their  unob- 
trusive lives  and  performed  their  unrecognized 
labors  on  the  raw  edge  of  the  world. 

Leaving  aside  the  obvious  suggestion  that  with- 
out the  pioneer  women  no  frontier  state  could  have 
been  permanently  established,  aside  from  the  nec- 
essary consideration  of  maternity,  the  wives  of  the 
woodsmen  of  the  border  states  were  the  ready  and 
efficient  coadjutors  of  the  saddlebag  preachers,  and, 
indeed,  made  their  success  possible.  It  was  gener- 
ally a  woman  who  bade  the  itinerant  welcome,  who 
prepared  a  meal  and  a  bed  for  him,  who  first  lis- 
tened to  his  preaching,  and  who  most  readily  learned 
the  songs  that  he  sang.  The  women,  then  as  now, 
were  the  great  auxiliary  force  without  whose  aid 
the  preacher  would  often  fmd  the  accomplishment 
of  his  task  impossible. 

How  can  we  picture  the  woman  of  the  backwoods 
more  than  a  century  ago?    We  know  that  even  in 


128  Nation  Builders 

the  larger  towns  and  cities — even  in  Philadelphia, 
New  York,  Baltimore,  or  Boston — the  richest  dames 
in  the  most  fashionable  social  circles  could  not  com- 
mand many  of  the  luxuries  that  have  grown  to  be 
necessaries  of  life  to  people  of  the  poorer  sort  in 
our  day.  The  wife  of  the  President  or  the  ladies  of 
her  republican  court  knew  nothing  of  a  thousand 
little  appliances  for  comfort  that  seem  essential  to 
people  of  very  moderate  means  nowadays.  Such 
matters  of  luxury  as  stationary  bathtubs,  hot  and 
cold  water,  evenly  heated  houses,  proper  sanitary 
appliances,  effectual  lighting  apparatus,  and  vari- 
ous labor-saving  devices  were  undreamed  of  by 
Martha  Washington  or  Dolly  Madison,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  less  fortunate  hosts  of  their  fellow 
countrywomen.  Candles  lighted — or  failed  to  light 
— the  great  echoing  rooms ;  warming  pans  made  the 
stately  four-poster  a  less  dangerous  and  more  com- 
fortable place  to  repose  than  the  lee  side  of  a  barn 
in  January ;  a  portable  tin  tub  did  duty  at  the  usual 
Saturday  night  ablutions;  and  the  spit  in  the  kitchen 
turned  before  a  fire  of  crackling  and  smoking  wood. 
The  loom  and  the  distaff  were  still  domestic  prop- 
erties, and  the  best-born  damsel  in  the  land  would 
have  thought  it  shame  if  she  could  not  have  at 
least  lent  a  hand  in  the  preparation  of  her  own  store 
of  li(nisehold  linen  and  wedding  finery.  A  wealthy 
woman  of  to-day  will  not  uncommonly  spend  more 


Frontier  Women  129 

in  a  single  hour  than  her  prototype  of  Washington's 
time  dared  to  squander  in  a  whole  season.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  the  wives  and  daughters  of  Boston's 
richest  merchants  and  Philadelphia's  most  eminent 
lawgivers  could  never  command  as  much  of  actual 
comfort  in  living  as  is  now  within  the  reach  of  the 
wife  and  daughter  of  any  mechanic  in  those  cities. 
Books  were  so  rare  that  dame  or  damsel  who  had 
read  half  a  hundred  might  be  looked  upon  as  a 
prodigious  scholar.  Our  circulating  libraries,  our 
multiplying  presses  and  ubiquitous  publishing  houses 
have  changed  all  that.  A  century  ago  the  printers 
and  the  editors  clamored  for  rags  with  which  the 
paper  mills  might  be  fed,  and  women  were  appealed 
to  to  save  the  rags  for  that  purpose.  The  entire 
product  of  the  paper  mills  in  New  England  would 
not  now  print  a  single  day's  output  of  the  Methodist 
Book  Concern. 

If  the  great  dames  lived  under  conditions  that 
none  of  their  granddaughters  would  consider  luxu- 
rious, what  a  lot  of  deprivations  must  have  fallen 
to  the  women  of  less  fortunate  families,  and  what 
absolute  barrenness  of  softness  and  comfort  with- 
out question  confronted  the  woman  of  the  frontier ! 
To  such  meagerness  the  great  emotional  uplift  that 
attended  the  preaching  of  the  message  of  salvation 
must  have  resembled  translation  into  a  more  benefi- 
cent world.     Day  by  day  the  old  grinding  routine 


130  Nation  Builders 

of  life:  the  piling  of  logs,  the  hauling  of  water, 
the  preparation  of  new-killed  meat,  the  grinding  of 
corn  between  rough  stones,  and  the  droning  of  the 
spinning  wheel — only  these  few  things,  over  and 
over,  daily,  monthly,  yearly,  without  cessation.  Over 
the  cabin  the  same  woods  that  sheltered  hundreds 
of  bloodthirsty  foes.  Sometimes  an  arrow  quiv- 
ered between  the  chinks  of  the  logs;  sometimes  the 
rifle  was  taken  from  its  pegs  over  the  fireplace  for 
instant  service ;  sometimes  the  flame  of  a  neighbor's 
burning  house  could  be  seen  through  the  trees,  or 
a  band  of  fugitives,  survivors  from  some  dreadful 
massacre,  would  stop  to  recruit  their  ranks. 

In  this  life,  if  the  husband  and  the  sons  were 
brutal  or  recreant,  the  desolateness  must  have  been 
unspeakable.  At  the  best  it  was  bad.  When  the 
preachers  found  such  women,  starved  mentally, 
starved  spiritually,  possessing  only  that  physical  en- 
durance for  which  they  have  been  famous,  they  un- 
folded to  them  the  greatest  of  all  stories,  delighted 
their  ears  with  songs  the  like  of  which  they  had 
never  heard  in  all  their  secluded,  hopeless  lives,  and 
pictured  for  them  a  heaven  to  whose  joys  and  tri- 
umphs immediate  possession  was  assured. 

A  man,  whose  soul  hunger  was  less  keen,  whose 
nature  had  not  yet  refused  the  daily  diet  of  husks, 
might  reject  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  with  its  inesti- 
mable riches;  but  few  women  could  hold  out  against 


Frontier  Women  131 

the  wonder,  the  beauty,  and  the  glory  of  the  alhir- 
ing  prospect.  Yesterday  one  might  have  stood 
dumb  and  weary  by  her  cabin  door,  looking  off  into 
that  never-changing  prospect  of  somber  trunks  and 
inevitable  shadows,  listless  and  hopeless ;  but  to-day 
she  has  learned  a  new  song  and  lives  in  a  new  world. 
Her  eyes  are  lifted  above  the  treetops;  her  mind  is 
lifted  above  the  weary  round  of  petty  duties.  She 
hears  the  soughing  of  the  wind  above  the  cabin  as  a 
challenge,  and  lilts  back  the  major  refrain : 

"  My  soul  mounteth  higher 
In  a  chariot  of  fire, 
And  the  moon  it  is  under  my  feet." 

Everywhere,  from  the  days  of  Dorcas,  women 
have  been  the  helpers  of  those  who  have  had  a  mis- 
sion to  preach,  and  they  have  been  the  efficient  co- 
workers of  the  minister  and  the  missionary.  The 
more  sluggish  or  more  wary  intelligence  of  the 
average  man  follows  the  initiative  of  the  woman  in 
most  religious  movements. 

It  needs  no  argument  to  show  the  value  of  the 
position  occupied  by  the  pioneer  women  of  the  Meth- 
odist societies,  nor  will  anyone  who  knows  them  or 
their  work  venture  to  suggest  that  they  have  sur- 
rendered aught  of  that  initiative  or  that  influence  in 
a  hundred  years. 

The  first  rank  of  the  preachers  were  frequently 
single  men,  though  before  long  not  a  few  of  those 


132  Nation  Builders 

who  were  in  the  field  added  to  their  personal  re- 
sponsibilities and  cares  by  taking  to  themselves 
wives.  The  example  set  by  Francis  Asbury  was  one 
of  celibacy,  though  whether  he  ever  intended  to 
make  his  own  position  in  this  respect  a  model  for 
the  younger  men  under  his  leadership  is  very  doubt- 
ful. Certain  it  is  that  the  tendency  toward  a  mar- 
ried ministry  increased  greatly  even  during  the  great 
bishop's  lifetime,  and  it  has  long  been  the  rule  in 
the  Methodist  Church. 

"The  noble  army  of  martyrs!" — was  there  ever 
a  body  of  human  beings  who  better  deserved  that 
name  than  the  wives  of  numberless  itinerant 
preachers  who  have  moved,  moved,  moved  up  and 
down  the  land,  from  post  to  post,  yearning  for  an 
abiding  place  and  never  finding  one,  longing  vainly 
for  the  home  security  so  dear  to  every  woman's 
heart,  and  forever  pulled  away  from  the  circle  of 
friends  to  whom  her  heart  was  beginning  to  cling 
with  the  attachment  of  love? 

"The  noble  army  of  martyrs  praise  Thee."  From 
every  quarter  of  the  land,  East,  West,  North,  and 
South,  their  lives  are  a  sweet  sacrifice,  accompanied 
by  the  gratitude  and  the  love  of  thousands  to  whom 
they  have  ministered.  In  estimating  the  influence 
of  Methodism  upon  the  religious  thought  and  the 
moral  advancement  of  the  world  the  story  of  the 
wives  of  the  preachers  forms  an  important  equation. 


CHAPTER  VII 
Another  Company  of  the  Sowers 

A  LITTLE  later  than  Abbott,  one  of  Asbury's  most 
reliable  and  valued  assistants  and  afterward  himself 
a  leader  among  American  Methodists,  Nathan 
Bangs  challenges  attention.  It  is  possible  that  he 
should  rank  next  to  the  pioneer  bishop  as  a  molding 
influence,  closely  identified  as  he  was  with  the  his- 
tory of  his  church  for  half  a  century. 

Nathan  Bangs  was  born  in  Stratford,  Connecti- 
cut, on  the  second  of  May,  1778.  While  still  a  boy 
he  removed  to  Stamford,  New  York,  in  company 
with  an  older  brother.  As  he  grew  to  manhood  he 
became  a  surveyor  and  schoolmaster,  but  hardly  had 
he  reached  maturity  when  the  appeal  of  an  itinerant 
Methodist  preacher,  whose  name  Is  unfortunately 
lost  to  us,  roused  his  dormant  religious  nature  and 
disturbed  his  satisfaction  with  himself  and  his  life. 
He  was  not  converted  at  this  time,  though  greatly 
troubled  in  conscience.  His  impulse  seems  to  have 
been  to  escape  from  all  reminders  of  a  subject  he 
would  willingly  have  forgotten.  Stamford  was  then 
almost  upon  the  frontier.  He  resolved  to  go  farther 
away,  into  still  more  uncivilized  regions,  where  he 


134  Nation  Builders 

believed  the  traveling  preacher  would  be  unlikely  to 
penetrate.  He  removed  to  Canada,  and  lived  for 
a  while  in  one  of  the  lawless  settlements  that  so  often 
mark  the  outposts  of  civilization.  Unsatisfied,  rest- 
less, troubled  at  heart,  we  may  believe  that  he  did 
not  hold  aloof  from  the  rude  life  around  him. 

One  day  the  inevitable  itinerant  preacher  arrived. 
The  Rev.  Joseph  Sawyer  got  hold  of  young  Bangs, 
and  the  result  was  a  new  and  powerful  convert  to 
Christianity  and  Methodism.  There  had  evidently 
been  strong  opposition  to  the  preacher  and  his  mes- 
sage, for  while  we  do  not  know  the  details  of  Mr. 
Sawyer's  adventures,  there  is  credible  information  to 
the  effect  that  a  bitter  spirit  of  persecution  assailed 
young  Bangs  at  the  very  outset.  He  was  an  object 
of  dislike  to  those  among  whom  he  had  lived  on 
terms  of  good  feeling  if  not  of  good  fellowship. 
He  was  boycotted,  his  means  of  earning  a  livelihood 
withdrawn,  and  violent  opposition  met  all  his  efforts. 
Finally  he  was  threatened  with  expulsion  from  the 
settlement.  Under  these  conditions  Nathan  Bangs 
joined  the  ranks  of  the  Methodist  itinerants,  and 
within  a  year  received  a  license  to  exhort.  Taking- 
little  provision  and  less  anxiety  for  the  perils  of  the 
way,  he  rode  into  the  wilderness  to  carry  the  torch 
that  he  felt  had  been  committed  to  him. 

Tlicro   was   something  finer,   deeper,   and   more 
abiding  than   i)iclurcsque  knight-errantry   in   such 


I^NOTiiER  Company  of  the  Sowers     135 

a  life,  enlisted  for  such  a  quest.  No  one  who  loved 
a  soft  life  or  valued  ease  and  safety  could  join  the 
brotherhood  of  the  itinerants.  To  its  dangers  and 
privations  Bangs  devoted  himself  with  an  enthusi- 
asm that  outlived  all  deprivation  and  suffering.  For 
many  years  he  was  part  of  that  voice  in  the  wilder- 
ness that  proclaimed  the  kingdom  of  heaven  at  hand. 

]\Iore  than  once  mobs  of  enraged  men,  whose 
practices  he  sternly  rebuked,  sought  his  life.  His 
enemies  laid  wait  for  him  in  the  woods  to  murder 
him,  but  he  escaped  from  them.  Frequently  he 
went  hungering  to  his  sleep  upon  the  moss  under 
the  trees  in  the  forest.  He  fairly  fought  his  way 
through  icy  storms  from  one  settlement  to  another, 
consumed  by  a  desire  to  deliver  his  message.  Like 
many  another  of  his  brethren,  before  he  had  been 
a  dozen  years  in  the  harness  he  could  have  equaled 
Saint  Paul's  list  of  casualties.  He  was  a  member 
of  the  New  York  Conference,  which  at  the  time 
of  his  admission  included  most  of  the  settled  portion 
of  New  York  State,  western  Connecticut,  Vermont, 
and  Canada  from  Quebec  to  the  settlements  oppo- 
site Detroit. 

Ordained  by  Francis  Asbury  In  1804,  three  years 
after  the  great  Cane  Ridge  revival.  Bangs  was  ap- 
pointed to  a  Canadian  circuit,  at  Thames  River. 
The  region  was  sparsely  settled,  infested  with  In- 
dians, and  a  stamping  ground  for  fur  traders,  trap- 


136  Nation  Builders 

pers,  half-breeds,  and  all  the  semicivilized  classes 
that  add  so  much  to  the  pages  of  romance  and  de- 
tract in  an  equal  ratio  from  the  pleasures  and  safety 
of  real  life.  In  1808  he  returned  to  the  states,  be- 
ing appointed  to  the  Delaware  Circuit.  From  there 
he  was  ordered  to  the  Albany  Circuit,  then  to  New 
York  city,  and  in  181 2  to  Montreal,  but  was  pre- 
vented from  filling  the  latter  appointment  by  the  war 
that  was  then  in  progress.  In  1813  Bangs  was  made 
presiding  elder  of  the  Rhinebeck  District,  which  ex- 
tended from  Rhinebeck,  on  the  Hudson  River,  to 
Pittsfield,  Vermont,  and  through  Connecticut  to 
Long  Island  Sound.  That  district  is  now  divided 
into  six.  At  that  time  there  were  three  chapels  in 
the  whole  territory. 

To  relate  the  successive  steps  of  Nathan  Bangs's 
promotion  can  only  serve  to  indicate  his  growing 
strength  in  the  church  and  the  confidence  reposed  in 
him  by  his  colaborers.  He  was  successively  ap- 
pointed ])y  the  General  Conference  as  Book  Agent, 
editor  of  the  Christian  Advocate,  and  editor  of  the 
Methodist  Quarterly,  among  his  associates  being  the 
learned  and  eminent  Bishop  Emory.  In  1836  he 
was  appointed  missionary  secretary.  In  1841  the 
presidency  of  the  Wesleyan  University  was  tendered 
to  him  and  accepted.  And  when,  in  1852,  he  retired, 
after  fifty-one  years  of  continuous  service,  he  was 
regarded  as  one  of  the  wisest  and  purest  nf  the  many 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers      137 

men  whose  lives  have  been  spent  in  the  same  high 
service. 

James  Axley  was  one  of  the  prominent  men  of 
the  second  generation  of  Methodist  preachers,  who 
dated  their  conversion  from  the  great  spiritual  re- 
generation at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  Peter 
Cartwright  and  Samuel  Parker  were  among  those 
who,  with  Axley,  presented  themselves  before  the 
1804  Conference.  A  natural  genius,  eccentric  and 
earnest,  self-sacrificing  and  brusque,  loved  and 
feared,  Axley  made  a  notable  place  for  himself  in 
the  Methodist  van.  Bishop  Morris  tells  of  his  first 
meeting  with  him : 

"The  following  salutations  were  exchanged : 

"  'How  are  you.  Brother  Axley  ?' 

"'Who  are  you?' 

"  'My  name  is  Thomas  Morris.' 

"Then,  surveying  me  from  head  to  foot,  he  re- 
plied, 'Upon  my  word,  I  think  they  were  hard  pushed 
for  bishop  timber  when  they  got  hold  of  you.'  " 

Yet  those  two  became  fast  friends,  and  the  bishop 
records  that  "every  hour  that  I  could  redeem  from 
Conference  and  council  business  was  enlivened  by 
his  quaint  but  thrilling  narratives  of  his  early  travels, 
labors,  and  difficulties.  Unaccustomed  to  the  free 
use  of  the  pen,  he  kept  all  his  records  in  his  tena- 
cious memory,  much  strengthened  by  use,  and  nar- 
rated with  uncommon  precision  as  to  names,  dates, 


138  Nation  Builders 

and  the  order  in  which  facts  transpired.  This  he 
did  leisurely  and  with  perfect  self-possession,  but 
spiced  the  whole  with  such  apt  remarks  and  con- 
summate good  humor  that  the  attention  of  the  com- 
pany never  faltered.  Ne\'er  was  I  better  entertained 
or  more  instructed  with  the  conversation  of  a  fellow 
sojourner  in  one  week  than  with  his.  It  was  decid- 
edly rich." 

As  a  singer  James  Axley  was  peculiarly  accept- 
able to  people  who  had  neither  choirs  nor  organs 
and  to  whom  a  good  leading  voice  was  a  great  boon. 
On  at  least  one  occasion  his  voice  gained  him  a 
much-desired  night's  lodging  after  one  had  been  re- 
fused. The  preacher  had  ridden  a  long  distance, 
and  near  nightfall  came  to  a  house  in  which  were 
two  women,  a  mother  and  daughter,  and  their  serv- 
ants. Beyond  the  plantation  he  must  plunge  again 
into  the  woods  and  spend  the  night  under  the  trees 
if  he  failed  to  find  a  welcome  at  the  house.  He  rode 
up  and  made  known  his  request,  which  was  no 
strange  one  in  that  part  of  the  country  at  that  day. 
The  women,  either  misjudging  Axley's  exterior, 
which  was  rough  and  uncouth,  or  lacking  the  com- 
mon hospitality  of  their  region,  refused  his  request. 
He  was  allowed  to  rest  himself  for  a  little  while 
and  warm  himself  before  the  fire,  for  it  was  cold 
weather.  As  he  stood  there,  thinking  of  the  pros- 
pect before  him  :\\y\  somewhat  downcast  in  conse- 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers     139 

quence,  he  began  to  sing  one  of  the  Methodist  hymns 
that  seemed  to  fit  so  naturally  into  all  the  experi- 
ences of  life,  and  before  he  had  finished  his  hostess 
ordered  the  servant  to  take  the  stranger's  horse 
around  to  the  barn  and  feed  him  well. 

A  sermon  which  Axley  preached  in  Baltimore  in 
1820  was  remembered  and  spoken  of  up  to  the  time 
of  the  civil  war;  but  the  effort  which  was  noted 
as  the  greatest  triumph  of  his  career  was  a  sermon 
preached  to  peach-brandy  distillers  in  East  Tennes- 
see, from  the  text,  "Alexander  the  coppersmith  did 
me  much  evil :  the  Lord  reward  him  according  to 
his  works"  (2  Tim.  4.  14).  It  was  a  temperance 
discourse,  and  ran  something  as  follows : 

"Paul  was  a  traveling  preacher  and  a  bishop,  T 
presume,  or  a  presiding  elder  at  least,  for  he  trav- 
eled extensively  and  had  much  to  do  not  only  in 
organizing  the  societies  but  in  sending  preachers 
here,  there,  and  all  over.  He  would  not  build  on 
another  man's  foundations,  but  formed  new  circuits 
where  Christ  was  not  named,  so  that  from  Jerusalem 
round  about  unto  Illyricum  he  had  fully  preached  the 
gospel  of  Christ.  One  new  place  that  he  visited  was 
very  wicked — Sabbath-breaking,  dancing,  drinking, 
quarreling,  fighting,  swearing,  etc.,  abounded;  but 
the  word  of  the  Lord  took  effect,  there  was  a  pow- 
erful stir  among  the  people,  and  many  were  con- 
verted.   Among  the  subjects  of  that  work  there  was 


140  Nation  Builders 

a  certain  noted  character  named  Alexander,  a  still- 
maker  by  trade ;  also  one  Hymenaeus,  who  was  his 
partner  in  that  business.  Paul  formed  a  new  society 
and  appointed  Brother  Alexander  class  leader. 
There  was  a  great  change  in  the  place:  the  people 
left  off  their  drinking,  fighting,  swearing,  horse  rac- 
ing, and  all  their  wicked  practices.  The  stills  were 
worked  up  into  bells  and  stew  kettles,  and  thus  ap- 
plied to  useful  purposes.  The  settlement  was  orderly, 
the  meetings  were  prosperous,  and  things  went  well 
with  them  for  some  time.  But  one  year  they  had  a 
pleasant  spring;  there  was  no  late  frost,  and  the 
peach  crop  hit  exactly.  I  do  suppose,  my  brethren, 
that  such  a  crop  of  peaches  was  never  known  before. 
The  old  folks  ate  all  they  could  eat,  the  children 
ate  all  they  could  eat,  the  pigs  ate  all  they  could 
eat,  and  the  sisters  preserved  all  they  could  preserve, 
and  still  the  limbs  were  bending  and  breaking.  One 
Sunday,  when  the  brethren  met  for  worship,  they 
gathered  round  outside  of  the  meetinghouse  and  got 
to  talking  about  their  worldly  business — as  you 
know  people  sometimes  do,  and  it  is  a  mighty  bad 
practice — and  one  said  to  another,  'Brother,  how's 
the  peach  crop  with  you  this  year?' 

"  *0,'  said  he,  T  never  saw  the  like;  they  are  rot- 
ting on  the  grnnnd  under  the  trees.  T  don't  know 
what  to  do  with  them.' 

'TTow  would  it  do  to  still  them?    The  peaches 


<(  n 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers      141 

will  go  to  waste,  but  the  brandy  will  keep,  and  it  is 
very  good  in  certain  cases  if  not  used  to  excess.' 

"  'I  should  like  to  know,'  asked  a  cute  brother, 
*how  you  can  make  brandy  without  stills?' 

"  That's  nothing,'  replied  one,  'for  our  class 
leader,  Brother  Alexander,  is  as  good  a  stillmaker 
as  can  be,  and  Brother  Hymenasus  is  another,  and 
rather  than  see  the  fruit  wasted  they,  no  doubt, 
would  make  us  a  few.' 

"The  next  thing  heard  on  the  subject  was  a  ham- 
mering in  the  class  leader's  shop,  and  soon  the  stills 
in  every  brother's  orchard  were  smoking  and  the 
liquid  poison  streaming.  When  one  called  on  an- 
other the  bottle  was  brought  out  with  the  remark, 
'I  want  you  to  taste  my  new  peach  brandy ;  I  think 
it  is  pretty  good.'  The  guest,  after  tasting  it  once, 
was  urged  to  repeat,  when,  smacking  his  lips,  he 
would  reply,  'Well,  it's  tolerable;  but  I  wish  you 
would  come  over  and  taste  mine.'  So  they  tasted 
and  tasted,  till  many  of  them  got  about  half  drunk 
and  I  don't  know  but  three  quarters.  Then  the  very 
devil  was  raised  among  them ;  the  society  was  in 
an  uproar,  and  Paul  was  sent  for  to  come  and  try 
and  settle  the  difficulty.  At  first  it  was  difficult  to 
find  sober,  disinterested  ones  enough  to  try  the 
guilty;  but  finally  he  got  his  committee  formed,  and 
the  first  one  he  brought  to  account  was  Alexander 
the  coppersmith,  who  pleaded  not  guilty.     He  de- 


142  Nation  Builders 

clared  that  he  had  not  tasted,  bought,  sold,  or  dis- 
tilled a  drop  of  brandy.  'But/  said  Paul,  'you  made 
the  stills,  and  if  you  hadn't  made  the  stills  there 
could  have  been  no  liquor  made,  and  if  no  liquor 
no  one  could  have  been  intoxicated.'  So  they  ex- 
pelled him  first  and  Hymenseus  next,  and  went  on 
for  complement,  till  the  society  was  relieved  of  all 
stillmakers,  distillers,  dram  sellers,  and  dram  drink- 
ers, and  peace  was  once  more  restored.  Paul  says : 
Tlolding  faith,  and  a  good  conscience;  which  some 
having  put  away  concerning  faith  have  made  ship- 
wreck :  of  whom  is  Hynien<TUs  and  Alexander : 
whom  I  have  delivered  unto  Satan,  that  they  may 
learn  not  to  blaspheme.'  Of  course,  they  flew  off 
the  handle  and  joined  the  schismatics." 

To  fully  appreciate  the  force  of  the  foregoing 
discourse  it  is  necessary,  of  course,  that  one  should 
put  himself  in  the  place  of  a  peach-growing,  still- 
making,  brandy-selling  community  and  try  to  read 
into  the  cold  lines  of  type  as  presented  here  the 
splendid  voice  and  vehement  delivery  of  the  ec- 
centric preacher. 

On  one  occasion  it  is  told  of  him  that,  having 
preached  upon  the  necessity  of  nonconformity  to 
worldly  fashions  if  people  would  be  sincere  Chris- 
tians, he  affected  to  hold  a  dialogue  with  some  imag- 
inary disputant  in  the  audience,  skillfully  changing 
his  voice  as  he  took  the  alternate  characters  in  the 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers     143 

debate,  and  walked  up  and  down  the  platform,  upon 
which,  behind  him,  several  other,  preachers  were 
seated.  After  appearing  to  demolish  his  opponent 
at  every  point  in  the  argument  the  latter  was 
made  to  say:  "But,  sir,  some  of  your  Methodist 
preachers  themselves  dress  fashionably  and  play  the 
dandy." 

"O  no,  my  friend;  that  cannot  be.  Methodist 
ministers  know  better.  They  are  men  of  more  sense 
than  that,  and  would  not  stoop  so  low  as  to  disgrace 
themselves  and  the  sacred  office  they  hold  by  such 
gross  inconsistency  of  character." 

"Well,  sir,  if  you  won't  take  my  word  for  it  just 
look  at  those  young  preachers  on  the  platform  be- 
hind you." 

Mr.  Axley  at  this  swung  around,  looked  his 
shrinking  colaborers  over  for  a  moment  in  seeming 
astonishment,  and  then  said,  in  a  dejected  tone,  fac- 
ing the  audience  again,  "If  you  please  zve  will  drop 
that  subject." 

William  Henry  Milburn,  the  blind  preacher,  has 
left  a  description  of  Peter  Cartwright  that  is  so 
graphic  and  at  the  same  time  so  picturesque  that  we 
are  tempted  to  quote  it  at  length.  It  was  during 
Milburn's  boyhood,  just  after  the  removal  of  his 
parents  from  their  Philadelphia  home  to  the  West, 
that  he  first  saw  the  famous  backwoods  preacher. 
It  was  the  first  Sunday  in  an  unfamiliar  church, 


144  Nation  Builders 

among  strange  people,  a  bright  June  day,  but  clouded 
to  the  stranger's  eye  by  homesickness. 

"Our  attention  was  arrested  by  a  strange  appari- 
tion striding  up  the  aisle.  All  seemed  whispering 
to  their  neighbors,  'There  he  goes,'  and  all  eyes  were 
riveted  upon  a  man  of  medium  height,  thickset,  with 
enormous  bone  and  muscle,  and  although  his  iron- 
o-rav  hair  and  wrinkled  brow  told  of  the  advance  of 
years  his  step  was  still  vigorous  and  firm.  His  face 
was  bronzed  by  exposure  to  the  weather;  he  car- 
ried a  white  Quaker  hat  in  his  hand,  and  his  upper 
garment  was  a  furniture-calico  dressing  gown  with- 
out wadding.  The  truant  breeze  seemed  to  seize 
this  garment  by  its  skirt,  and,  lifting  it  to  a  level 
with  his  armpits,  disclosed  to  the  gazing  congrega- 
tion a  full  view  of  the  copperas-colored  pantaloons 
and  shirt  of  the  divine — for  he  was  a  divine,  and  one 
worth  a  day's  journey  to  see  and  hear. 

"He  had  then  been  a  backwoods  preacher  for 
nearly  forty  years,  ranging  the  country  from  the 
Lakes  to  the  Gulf  and  from  the  Alleghanies  to  the 
Mississippi.  He  was  inured  to  every  form  of  hard- 
slii])  and  had  looked  calmly  at  peril  of  every  kind — 
ihc  tomaliawk  of  llu-  Indian,  the  spring  of  the  pan- 
ther, the  hug  oi  the  bear,  the  sweep  of  the  tornado, 
the  rush  of  swollen  torrents,  ruid  the  fearful  chasm 
of  (lie  earthf|nnkc.  He  luul  Iain  in  the  canebrake 
aii'l  made  his  bed  upon  the  snow  of  llie  prairie  and 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers      145 

oil  the  oozy  soil  of  the  swamp,  and  had  wandered, 
hunger-bitten,  among  the  solitudes  of  the  mountains. 
He  had  been  in  jeopardy  among  robbers  and  in  dan- 
ger from  desperadoes  who  had  sworn  to  take  his  life. 
He  had  preached  in  the  cabin  of  the  slave  and  the 
mansion  of  the  master,  to  the  Indians  and  to  the 
men  of  the  border.  He  had  taken  his  life  in  his 
hand  and  had  ridden  in  the  path  of  whizzing  bullets, 
that  he  might  proclaim  peace.  He  had  stood  on  the 
outskirts  of  civilization  and  welcomed  the  first 
comers  to  the  woods  and  prairies.  At  the  command 
of  Him  who  said,  'Go  into  all  the  world,'  he  had 
roamed  through  the  wilderness ;  as  a  disciple  of  the 
man  who  said,  'The  world  is  my  parish,'  his  travels 
had  equaled  the  limits  of  an  empire. 

"Many  a  son  of  Anak  has  been  leveled  in  the  dust 
by  his  sledgelike  fist,  and  when  the  blind  fury  of  his 
assailants  urged  them  headlong  into  personal  con- 
flict with  him  his  agility,  strength,  and  resolution 
gave  them  cause  for  bitter  repentance.  Another 
Gideon,  more  than  once  has  he  led  a  handful  of  the 
faithful  against  the  armies  of  the  aliens  who  were 
desecrating  the  place  of  worship  and  threatening  to 
abolish  religious  services,  and  put  them  to  inglorious 
flight.  But  he  only  girded  on  his  strength  thus  and 
used  the  weapons  that  nature  gave  him  when  neces- 
sity and  the  law  of  self-defense  seemed  to  admit  of 
no  escape.     To  breathe  the  word  of  hope  into  the 


146  Nation  Builders 

ear  of  the  dying  and  to  minister  solace  to  the  sur- 
vivors, to  take  little  children  in  his  arms  and  bless 
them,  to  lead  the  flock  over  which  God  had  made  him 
overseer,  and  to  warn  the  ungodly  of  the  error  of 
their  ways,  entreating  them  to  be  reconciled  to  God 
by  the  cross  of  Christ,  was  the  business  of  his  life. 
Learning  he  had  none,  but  the  keenest  perception 
and  the  truest  instincts  enabled  him  to  read  human 
nature  as  men  read  a  book  ...  a  workman  that 
needed  not  to  be  ashamed. 

"A  voice  which,  in  his  prime,  was  capable  of 
almost  every  modulation,  the  earnest  force  and 
homely  directness  of  his  speech,  and  his  power  over 
the  passions  of  the  human  heart  made  him  an  orator 
to  win  and  command  the  suffrages  of  a  Western 
audience.  And  ever  through  the  discourse  came  and 
went  and  came  again  a  humor  that  was  resistless, 
now  broadening  the  features  into  a  merry  smile,  and 
then  softening  the  heart  until  tears  stood  in  the  eyes 
of  all.  His  figures  and  illustrations  were  often 
grand,  sometimes  fantastical.  Like  all  natives  of 
a  new  country,  he  spoke  in  metaphors,  and  his  were 
borrowed  from  the  magnificent  realm  in  which  he 
lived.  All  forms  of  nature  were  familiar  to  him. 
.  .  .  You  might  hear,  in  a  single  discourse,  the  thun- 
der tread  of  a  frightened  herd  of  buffaloes  as  they 
rushed  wildly  across  the  prairie,  the  crash  of  the 
windrow  as  it  fell  smitten  by^  the  breath  of  the  tcin- 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers      147 

pest,  the  piercing  scream  of  the  wildcat  as  it  scared 
the  midnight  forest,  the  majestic  rhythm  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi as  it  harmonized  the  distant  East  and  West 
and,  united,  bore  their  tributes  to  the  far-off  ocean, 
the  silvery  flow  of  a  mountain  rivulet,  the  whisper 
of  groves,  and  the  jocund  laughter  of  unnumbered 
prairie  flowers  as  they  toyed  in  dalliance  with  the 
evening  breeze.  .  .  .  Another  of  the  poet's  attri- 
butes was  his — the  impulse  and  power  to  create 
his  own  language,  and  he  was  the  best  lexicon  of 
Western  words,  phrases,  and  idioms  that  I  have 
ever  heard. 

"Such  was  the  man  that  now  stood  before  us  in 
the  desk,  the  famous  presiding  elder  of  Illinois — 
the  renowned  Peter  Cartwright." 

The  anecdotes  of  Cartwright's  eccentric  humor 
were  almost  numberless.  They  were  as  familiar  at 
the  firesides  of  an  older  generation  of  Methodists 
as  the  tales  of  the  Cid  were  to  the  people  of  Spain  in 
the  olden  times.  Not  Mr.  Travers  or  David  Crockett 
nor  hardly  even  President  Lincoln  was  the  subject 
of  more  anecdotes  than  this  much-beloved  itinerant 
preacher. 

With  great  gusto  an  appreciative  parishioner  on 
the  frontier  would  recount  how  Cartwright  first 
licked  and  then  converted  the  bully  who  attempted 
to  bar  his  way  to  a  preaching  appointment.  He  was 
said  to  have  been  the  original  of  the  story  told  by 


148  Nation  Builders 

Edward  Eggleston  in  The  Circuit  Rider,  of  the  min- 
ister who  worked  a  turbulent  audience  to  a  pitch  of 
fury  by  his  fearless  denunciations  of  their  wicked- 
ness, and  then,  just  at  the  moment  when  they  \vere 
making  a  rush  toward  him,  extinguished  the  candles 
in  the  desk  and  made  his  exit  unhurt. 

On  one  occasion,  at  a  Conference  presided  over 
by  a  bishop  whose  physical  infirmity  made  him  a  foe 
to  mirth,  the  bubbling  humor  of  Cartwright  was 
regarded  with  marked  disfavor.  The  superior  officer 
called  him  sternly  to  account,  and  something  like  the 
following  dialogue  took  place  : 

"I  read  in  my  Bible,  'Be  angry  and  sin  not,'  but 
I  nowhere  read,  'Laugh  and  sin  not.'  We  will  ask 
divine  pardon  for  this  levity.  Brother  Cartwright 
will  lead  in  prayer." 

Cartwright  led  in  repeating  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
and  then  jumped  to  his  feet  to  take  up  the  cudgels : 
"Look  here,  Mr.  Bishop,  when  I  dig  potatoes  I 
dig  potatoes,  when  I  hoe  corn  I  hoe  corn,  when 
I  pray  I  pray,  and  when  I  attend  to  business  I  want 
to  attend  to  business.  I  wish  you  did,  too,  and  I 
don't  want  you  to  take  such  a  snap  judgment  on  me 
again." 

"Brother,  do  you  think  you  arc  growing  in 
grace  ?" 

"Yes,  bishop,  I  think  I  am — in  spots." 

The  bishop  did  not  pursue  the  subject  any  further. 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers     149 

Another  anecdote  of  the  Ilh'nois  preacher  relates 
to  his  first  visit  to  New  York,  where  he  put  up  at 
the  Astor  House  and  was  given  a  room  as  near  the 
roof  as  could  be  found.  A  sleepy  night  clerk,  not 
greatly  prepossessed  with  the  appearance  of  the 
backwoodsman,  whom  he  took  for  a  regular  hayseed, 
was  not  a  little  bothered  when  the  bell  began  to  ring 
from  the  distant  apartment,  and  the  servant  who 
had  conducted  the  guest  to  his  eyrie  commenced  a 
series  of  journeys  up  the  interminable  stairs.  It  was 
ages  before  the  day  of  elevators,  and  the  waiter  was 
getting  tired.  He  reported  that  the  guest  was  crazy. 
"The  first  time  he  called  me  up  to  ask  how  we  were 
all  getting  on  down  here,"  he  told  the  clerk.  "And 
the  next  time  he  was  bothered  by  the  bell  on  the 
City  Hall  and  wanted  to  know  where  the  fire  was, 
and  the  last  time  he  asked  for  an  ax." 

"An  ax?" 

"Yes,  sir,  an  ax." 

"What  in  creation  does  he  want  with  an  ax." 

"I  don't  know,  sir.  He  insisted  that  he  must  have 
one." 

Then  the  clerk  climbed  to  the  distant  room  and 
■  asked  somewhat  impatiently  what  an  ax  was  wanted 
for. 

"Well,"  said  the  guest,  "in  my  state  when  a  man 
has  a  distance  to  go  in  a  strange  country  he  blazes 
his  way  with  an  ax,  so  that  he  may  know  how  to  get 


150  Nation  Builders 

back.  I  want  to  leave  my  room,  and  I  want  to  blaze 
my  way  so  that  I  can  find  it  again." 

"Who  are  you,  anyway?"  gasped  the  astonished 
clerk. 

"My  name  is  Peter  Cartwright,"  answered  the 
old  man,  amiably. 

Apologies  were  instantly  forthcoming;  the  clerk 
did  not  know,  had  not  been  able  to  read  the  name 
on  the  register,  etc.  Certainly  he  had  reserved  a 
room  on  the  second  floor,  the  very  best  in  the  house, 
for  the  distinguished  guest,  and  the  satisfied  preacher 
descended  to  more  agreeable  quarters. 

"How  is  it,"  once  asked  a  New  Englander  of  an- 
other church,  "that  your  denomination  has  no  Doc- 
tors of  Divinity?" 

Peter's  answer  was  instant :  "Our  divinity  has 
never  been  sick,  and,  consequently,  doesn't  need 
doctoring." 

Now,  when  Cartwright  was  in  company  with 
General  Jackson  (for  he  once  preached  on  a  circuit 
that  included  the  Hermitage)  he  abated  nothing  of 
his  sturdy  independence  of  speech  and  character,  and 
the  Democratic  leader  admired  him  greatly.  One 
of  their  first  encounters  was  upon  an  occasion  when 
Cartwright  was  preaching  and  tlie  general  entered 
the  meetinghouse.  Some  one  whispered,  "Brother 
Cartwright,  you  must  be  careful  how  you  preach 
to-night;  General  Jiickson  has  just  come  in." 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers      151 

In  an  instant  the  preacher's  uncompromising  an- 
swer was  heard  in  every  corner  of  the  building: 
"What  do  you  suppose  I  care  for  General  Jackson? 
If  he  don't  repent  of  his  sins  and  ask  pardon  and 
believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  he  will  be  damned 
as  quick  as  any  other  sinner." 

Jackson  met  him  the  next  morning,  shook  hands 
cordially,  and  said:  "Sir,  you  are  a  preacher  after 
my  own  heart.  If  I  had  a  regiment  of  such  men  as 
you  I'd  conquer  the  earth." 

A  flippant  youth,  a  guest  at  General  Jackson's 
table,  thought  that  it  would  be  noble  sport  to  bait  the 
preacher,  who  was  also  present.  "Mr.  Cartwright," 
he  began,  "do  you  really  believe  in  hell  ?  Of  course 
you  preach  about  it,  but  I  want  your  private  opin- 
ion. Can  any  intelligent  man  believe  any  nonsense 
of  that  sort?" 

Before  the  preacher  had  time  to  answer  the  gen- 
eral had  taken  up  the  cudgels  for  him :  "Mr.  Jones, 
I  believe  in  hell!" 

"You,  General  Jackson  ?"  stammered  the  confused 
guest.  "Why,  wdiat  possible  use  can  there  be  for 
such  a  place?" 

"To  put  infernal  fools  like  you  in,  sir,"  vociferated 
the  general,  whose  practice  w^as  not  at  that  time  quite 
on  a  par  with  his  theology,  but  who  did  not  propose 
to  countenance  any  disrespect  to  religion  at  his 
board. 


152  Nation  Builders 

Cartwright  was  not  a  stickler  for  social  observ- 
ances, but  he  did  demand  and  insist  upon  deference 
to  religious  forms  and  a  certain  respect  to  the  min- 
isters of  the  gospel.  He  more  than  once  refused  to 
eat  at  a  table  where  he  was  not  permitted  to  first 
ask  a  blessing  on  the  food.  Though  hungry  and 
weary  after  a  long  journey,  he  would  shake  the  dust 
from  his  feet  and  prolong  his  fast  indefinitely  rather 
than  give  way  in  such  a  matter. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  stories  told  of  Cart- 
wright  (on  his  own  authority)  is  that  once  when 
in  the  mountains  he  was  the  means  of  turning  a 
dance  into  a  prayer  meeting.  The  people  were  good- 
natured  pioneers,  not  used  to  ministers  and  their 
ways,  but  ready  to  give  the  stranger  their  best  and 
a  welcome.  After  the  dance  commenced  the  belle 
of  the  occasion,  thinking  it  a  pity  that  so  stalwart  a 
young  man  should  be  left  to  sit  out  the  festivities 
alone,  and  no  doubt  attributing  his  inactivity  to 
bashfulness,  held  out  her  hand  to  him.  and  invited 
him  to  dance  with  her.  On  the  spur  of  the  moment 
Cartwright  rose,  took  the  girl's  hand,  and  led  her 
into  the  middle  of  the  room ;  then,  to  the  astonish- 
ment of  all,  he  announced  that  he  never  did  anything 
without  asking  God's  blessing  upon  it,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  kneel  and  pray,  still  holding  the  hand  of 
his  somewhat  frightened  partner.  TTe  prayed  with 
"great    liberty."    as    the    old-fashioned    Methodist 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers     153 

phrase  was,  and  in  a  little  while  he  had  a  revival  in 
full  swing. 

Cartwright  went  to  Boston  in  later  life  for  a  visit, 
and  the  crowds  who  flocked  to  hear  him  were  disap- 
pointed. They  had  heard  much  about  the  wild  elo- 
quence of  this  backwoodsman,  and  failed  to  find  it. 
The  fact  seems  to  be  that  Cartwright  was  trying  his 
best  to  adapt  himself  to  the  cultivated  people  of  the 
Hub,  and,  as  a  consequence,  they  did  not  hear  the 
real  Cartwright  at  all  at  first.  But  after  the  second 
or  third  sermon  he  abandoned  the  attempt  to  be 
anything  other  than  his  natural  self,  and  the 
result  was  that  the  favor  of  his  hearers  increased 
mightily. 

One  of  the  men  of  Cartwright's  generation,  accus- 
tomed to  the  sights  and  sounds  and  signs  of  the 
woods  and  the  waters,  used  to  note  of  bird  and  cry 
of  beast,  well  versed  in  woodlore  and  cabin  customs, 
heard  the  music  of  a  piano  for  the  first  time  with 
rapture.  At  last  his  musical  soul  was  satisfied  with 
something  approaching  the  heavenly  strains  he  had 
dreamed  of,  but  there  was  nothing  in  his  experience 
with  which  to  compare  it  except — could  imagination 
build  upon  a  slighter  foundation? — sheep  bells! 
"Did  anyone  ever  hear  such  a  set  of  sheep  bells?" 
he  cried. 

A  pendant  to  the  above  is  an  incident  narrated  of 
another  preacher  who  knocked  loudly  on  a  door 


154  Nation  Builders 

beside  which  was  a  silver-plated  bell  handle,  of  the 
use  of  which  he  had  not  the  slightest  idea. 

Mr.  Milburn  tells  how  he  went  into  the  work  of 
the  ministry  with  a  very  small  musical  equipment. 
He  had  three  tunes,  learned  with  great  pains :  a  long- 
meter,  short  meter,  and  common  meter,  that  should 
have  fitted  any  ordinary  occasion.  But  he  records 
with  considerable  naivete  that  he  frequently  met  with 
disaster  by  trying  to  fit  long-meter  words  to  his 
common-meter  tune.  One  of  the  preachers,  with  a 
capacity  for  music  about  equal  to  Milburn's — that 
is  to  say,  far  below  the  average — used  to  ask  if  some 
brother  would  "raise"  the  tune,  averring  that  he 
could  "tote"  it  afterward.  But  the  plan  did  not 
always  work  well. 

We  once  asked  a  preacher  who  was  familiar  with 
frontier  work  what  he  considered  the  most  necessary 
accomplishment  for  the  Methodist  itinerant,  and  he 
promptly  replied :  "The  ability  to  sing.  Music,  next 
to  the  Bible,  is  the  thing  to  be  relied  upon.  If  not 
one  of  the  questions  formally  asked  when  a  candi- 
date comes  up  before  Conference,  it  is  at  least  put 
to  him  in  some  form  :  'Can  you  sing?'  The  ability  to 
sing  means  the  ability  to  gather  a  congregation 
almost  anywhere.  I  find  it  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance, and  since  I  learned  to  strum  a  few  chords  on  a 
guitar  I  can  always  get  a  crowd  to  listen  to  me  in  an 
Indian  village,  a  logging  camp,  or  a  mining  town." 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers      155 

Nearly  all  of  the  older  preachers  could  at  least 
"raise  the  tune."  Many  could  "tote  it"  with  con- 
siderable power  and  energy,  if  not  with  the  finished 
grace  of  a  De  Reszke,  and  not  a  few  were  famous 
for  the  possession  of  rich,  flexible,  sweet  voices 
which,  like  their  hearts,  were  "tuned  to  praise." 

Another  man  of  Cartwright's  day,  an  abler  man 
as  a  theologian,  though  not  readier  in  defense  of  the 
things  he  was  persuaded  were  true,  was  Elder  Peter 
Ackers.  He  was  so  rapt  in  his  subject  that  he  fre- 
quently forgot  time  and  place,  and  is  said  to  have 
preached  on  occasions  sermons  four  or  five  hours 
long.  To  the  praise  of  his  earnestness  be  it  said  that 
his  audience  would  not  have  had  the  discourse  a 
minute  shorter.  Perhaps  something  should  be  said 
to  the  praise  of  the  audience,  too,  for  it  took  certain 
sturdiness  of  physique  as  well  as  spiritual  hunger 
to  stand  such  an  outpouring  of  eloquence. 

Henry  Biddleman  Bascom  was  born  in  May, 
1796,  and  died  at  Louisville,  Kentucky,  on  Septem- 
ber 8,  1850.  He  was  elected  a  bishop  of  the  Meth- 
odist Episcopal  Church,  South,  in  May,  1850,  hav- 
ing for  eight  years  previously  been  president  of 
the  Transylvania  University.  By  a  comparison  of 
dates  it  will  be  seen  that  \\hen  his  work  was 
finished  he  was  not  an  old  man,  yet  he  was  one  of 
those  who  served  to  connect  the  earlier  and  later 
periods  of  Methodist  history  in  America.     At  the 


156  Nation  Builders 

time  of  the  great  revival  which  distinguished  the 
opening  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  he  was  but 
a  child,  yet  he  was  an  important  factor  in  the  work 
of  building  and  developing  the  superstructure  placed 
upon  the  foundations  he  helped  to  lay. 

A  gentleman  whose  recollections  go  back  to  the 
early  middle  period  of  Methodist  history  told  how 
Bascom  took  the  people  of  New  York  by  storm. 
In  the  old  Greene  Street  Church  he  drew  such 
crowds  that  people  climbed  up  to  the  windows  and 
stood  outside  the  doors  in  breathless  attention,  while 
the  congregation  within  were  swayed  by  his  words 
as  ripe  grain  is  moved  by  the  wind  that  passes  over 
it.  Men  sat  with  mouths  agape,  or  with  tears  run- 
ning over  their  cheeks,  utterly  oblivious  of  their 
surroundings,  intent  only  upon  the  persuasive,  elo- 
quent, mastering  voice  and  keen  eyes  and  vehement 
gestures  of  the  greatest  of  American  pulpit  orators. 

Those  who  tell  of  his  preaching  recollect  always 
the  effect  and  forget  the  sermon.  They  relate  their 
impressions  as  one  would  describe  a  picture.  There 
was  the  tall,  spare,  eagle-eyed,  magnetic  man  on  his 
feet ;  the  graceful  swing  and  sweep  of  his  arms ;  the 
fierce,  passionate  denunciation,  and  the  musical,  con- 
vincing sweetness  of  his  voice.  There  were  the  rows 
upon  rows  of  crowded  humanity  in  the  pews,  the 
packed  aisles,  the  faces  of  self-forgetful,  entranced 
listeners  convulsed  with  emotion.    But  the  words? 


Another  Company  of  the  Sowers     157 

They  were  not  reported.  Like  the  tones  of  sweet 
singers  and  the  skill  of  bygone  players  upon  instru- 
ments, the  music  of  that  voice  and  the  skill  of  that 
performer  upon  the  human  heart  must  remain  for- 
ever a  matter  of  tradition.  The  few  bits  and  snatches 
that  are  attributed  to  him  are  denuded  and  cold. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A  Recollection  of  Bascom 

[This  narrative  of  a  Sabbath  morning's  journey 
to  see  and  hear  Henry  Bascom,  and  the  following 
estimate  of  the  great  orator's  relation  to  the  reli- 
gious life  of  the  people  of  his  generation,  are  a  per- 
sonal note,  written  by  the  late  Andrew  C.  Wheeler. 
His  associate  in  the  authorship  of  this  book  has  not 
abridged  nor  in  any  way  changed  this  most  graphic 
and  valuable  record:] 

A  Dream  of  Childhood's  Dream 

One  of  the  earliest  and  deepest  of  impressions  was 
made  upon  my  child  mind  when  I  was  about  six 
years  old.  It  was  in  Indiana,  where  my  father  had 
tlien  been  li\'ing  for  several  years.  He  set  out  early 
one  Sabbath  morning  in  summer  with  my  mother 
and  myself  in  a  buggy  to  go  fifteen  miles  to  church. 
This  in  itself  was  an  extraordinary  proceeding  even 
to  me,  for  we  had  our  own  church  convenient,  and 
my  father,  as  I  well  knew,  being  a  rigid  member  of 
it,  was  opposed  in  principle  to  what  was  then  called 
"buggy  riding"  on  Sunday.  A  journey  of  fifteen 
miles  at  that  time  in  a  wild  country  was  a  much  more 


A  Recollection  of  Bascom  159 

arduous  undertaking  than  we  can  conceive  of  at  this 
day.  The  roads  were  uncertain  and  frequently  im- 
passable. They  led  through  primeval  forests  and 
across  treacherous  fords  and  skirted  uncertain 
sloughs,  and  they  were  beset  with  other  perils  of  man 
and  beast  in  a  wilderness.  But  to  the  quickened  sen- 
sibilities of  the  child  the  journey  wore  the  ineradi- 
cable delight  of  a  new  experience.  It  was  the  first 
time  that  I  had  seen  the  external  world  lit  with  the 
benison  of  sunrise,  and  to  me  the  majesty  of  nature 
in  all  her  unkempt  glory  wore  the  sparkle  and  sang 
the  song  of  a  new  existence. 

We  must  have  toiled  laboriously  over  that  pri- 
meval track,  beset  with  difficulties  and  obstructions 
of  which  I  took  no  heed.  I  was  sensible  of  an  eager- 
ness and  a  zest  in  the  undertaking  that  invested  it 
with  some  kind  of  inscrutable  interest,  but  mainly 
I  exulted  in  the  glory  of  the  way.  The  precious 
alchemy  of  a  child  mind  transmuted  those  rude  ele- 
ments into  the  sharp  ecstasy  of  surprises.  The 
musky  scents  of  the  forest  were  strangely  acute 
and  delightful,  and  the  morning  tumult  of  the 
birds  choired  us  on  our  journey  with  ineffable 
joyousness. 

As  we  neared  the  end  of  our  journey  we  encoun- 
tered at  the  crossroads  other  mire-bespattered  vehi- 
cles, evidently  upon  the  same  errand  as  ourselves. 
From  the  salutations  that  passed  I  understood  only 


i6o  Nation  Builders 

that  some  common  purpose  was  animating  our  little 
community,  and  that  not  only  our  neighbors  but  the 
inhabitants  of  other  and  to  me  unknown  communi- 
ties were  converging  upon  some  central  destination 
with  eagerness  and  with  determination.  As  this 
consciousness  of  some  important  and  common  pur- 
pose lying  at  the  end  of  our  journey  gradually 
displaced  the  child's  enjoyment  of  the  senses  I 
must  have  made  inquiries  of  my  mother,  for  she 
informed  me,  with  a  solemnity  that  was  meant  to 
be  comprehensive,  that  we  were  going  "to  hear 
Bascom." 

I  repeated  it  over  in  my  mind  with  a  mimetic  echo 
of  her  seriousness :  "We  are  going  to  hear  Bascom." 
To  go  and  hear  Bascom  was  then  one  of  the  most 
important  events  in  one's  life.  All  that  I  knew  of 
life  was  hurrying  forward  to  the  accomplishment  of 
that  great  feat.  To  go  and  hear  him  was  at  least  for 
me  to  pass  through  a  strangely  beautiful  and  exult- 
ant experience. 

Presently  we  approached  a  village,  and  as  we  did 
so  the  broader  roadway  became  choked  with  vehicles 
of  all  kinds  carrying  heavy  freights  of  human  be- 
ings, some  of  them  devout  and  sensible  of  the  weight 
of  the  occasion,  others  vociferous  and  reckless — as 
if  to  hear  Bascom  were  as  much  of  an  event  as 
going  to  the  circus.  Finally  we  came  to  a  green  area 
with  the  old-fashioned  white  "meetinghouse"  in  the 


A  Recollection  of  Bascom  i6i 

center,  and  then  we  were  swallowed  up  In  a  great 
multitude. 

All  the  particulars  of  that  unusual  spectacle  were 
deeply  impressed  upon  my  plastic  mind.  The  vast 
concourse  of  people,  crowding  up  at  the  church 
entrance,  the  great  circles  of  wagons,  and  some- 
where the  faint,  protesting  clang  of  a  distant  bell, 
sharp  and  melodious  to  my  ear,  that  must  have 
been  urgently  reminding  many  of  these  people  that 
their  own  church  should  not  be  neglected  to  hear 
Bascom. 

I  remember  the  exclamation  of  disappointment 
made  by  my  father  when,  standing  up  in  the  buggy, 
he  saw  that  he  had  arrived  too  late  to  get  into  the 
church.  I  recall  as  from  a  dream  an  effort  of  his 
to  find  the  home  of  an  acquaintance,  where  my 
mother  could  rest  before  starting  back,  and  how 
when  it  was  found  it  was  deserted — everybody  had 
gone  to  hear  Bascom.  Then  it  was  that  in  wan- 
dering back  to  the  central  point  of  attraction,  and 
working  his  way  up  to  one  of  the  open  church  win- 
dows he  lifted  me  up  in  his  arms  to  look  in.  It 
was  that  momentary  glimpse,  caught  by  a  child's 
sensitive  eye  and  photographed  forever  on  his  brain, 
that  I  now  try  to  reproduce.  T  saw  a  dense  and 
eager  assemblage  held  spellbound  by  a  majestic 
figure  in  the  pulpit,  that  to  me  wore  an  almost  super- 
natural  air   of  authority  and   grandeur.     In   that 


1 62  Nation  Builders 

transient  glimpse  were  all  the  ingredients  of  an  after 
speculation  and  wonder.  The  wet  faces,  the  strained 
and    still    attention — broken    only    by    the    meas- 
ured cadences  of  one  voice — the  contrast  of  the 
homespun  assemblage  with  the  inspired  air  of  the 
speaker,  and,  above  all,  the  strange  words  that  my 
ear   caught   and    retained   without   knowing   their 
meaning — "that  ye   might   have   life   and   have   it 
more  abundantly" — all  these  things  in  one  flash,  as 
it  were,  made  a  revelation  of  power  wholly  inex- 
plicable that  got  hold  of  my  imagination.     In  the 
Bible  stories  that  my  mother  told  me  afterward,  of 
the  prophets  and  warriors,  my  infantile  fancy  filled 
in  the  descriptive  outlines  with  that  majestic  figure, 
as  I  had  seen  it  with  arm  uplifted  and  head  erect, 
uttering  mysterious  words  at  which  men  were  ap- 
palled.    David,  Moses,  Elisha,  and  Saint  Paul  for 
a  long  time  afterward  took  on  the  dimensions  and 
authority  of  that  form  and  face  thus  shot  in  an 
instant  across  the  vision  of  a  child. 

That  was  the  only  glimpse  I  ever  caught  of 
Henry  B.  Bascom,  the  great  preacher.  But  after- 
ward my  mother  told  me  that  my  father  had  held 
nic  up  lo  that  church  window  so  that  I  could  say 
in  after  life  that  I  had  seen  the  greatest  preacher  in 
the  world.  In  her  dear  old  scale  of  values  that  was 
nil  inestimable  privilege.  And  now,  after  all  these 
years,  I  am  trying  to  make  good  her  words,  and  if 


A  Recollection  or  BxVscom  163 

I  go  a  little  beyond  them  and  try  to  see  the  great 
preacher  as  others  saw  him  it  is  the  best  one  can  do 
who  had  the  misfortune  to  be  born  a  few  years  too 
late  to  enter  fully  into  the  popular  enthusiasm  that 
attended  his  career. 


CHAPTER  IX 
The  Songs  of  Zion 

We  have  spoken  of  the  ability  to  sing  as  part  of 
the  Methodist  preacher's  equipment.  It  would 
hardly  be  possible  to  overestimate  the  power  of 
music  in  drawing  and  holding  audiences  of  the 
plain  people,  to  use  Mr.  Lincoln's  descriptive 
phrase  for  the  large  majority  of  his  fellow  coun- 
trymen. 

Nowadays  great  organs,  responding  to  the  touch 
of  skillful  players,  trained  choirs  and  star  singers 
that  make  a  profession  of  "tuneful  words  of  praise," 
take  the  place  in  many  Methodist  churches  of  the 
simple,  sincere,  swelling  outburst  of  congregational 
song.  The  times  have  changed,  and  the  preacher  no 
longer  is  obliged  to  be  chorister  and  precentor.  But 
in  the  earlier  days  he  sang  almost  as  many  souls  to 
everlasting  bliss  as  he  preached  into  the  ways  of 
righteousness. 

In  the  woods,  across  some  forlorn  clearing, 
through  the  rich  river  bottoms,  and  on  the  mountain 
side  the  clarion  notes  of  sacred  song  sounded  like 
the  bugle  that  announces  the  advance  of  a  squadron. 
The  woodsman,  the  Indian,  the  river  boatman  drew 


The  Songs  of  Zion  165 

near  to  hear  who  this  vociferous  entertainer  was 
and  what  his  outburst  signified. 

In  a  country  where  one  old  fiddle  to  a  dozen  clear- 
ings was  a  liberal  allowance  in  the  matter  of  musical 
entertainment  and  new  songs  were  as  scarce  as  new 
dollars,  where  the  people,  physically  strong  and 
active,  were  mentally  starved,  the  coming  of  a  man 
whose  repertoire  contained  a  dozen  or  twenty  of 
Charles  Wesley's  hymns  meant  more  than  an  opera 
company  that  should  promise  everything  from 
Tannhauser  to  Carmen  would  mean  to  us. 

We,  who  are  satiated  with  entertainment,  can 
scarcely  realize  what  that  one  voice  uplifted  in  song 
meant  to  the  frontiersman.  If  you  have  seen  a  band 
in  the  streets  of  a  small  country  town  you  have 
something  of  the  impression  produced.  That  was 
the  first  important  function  of  the  spiritual  songs 
— they  drew  the  people  together. 

Then  they  made  the  worship  general  when  other- 
wise it  would  have  been  individual.  The  first  req- 
uisite of  a  good  song  is  that  it  shall  flow  from  the 
lips  without  effort— "words  that  sing  themselves," 
we  are  wont  to  talk  about.  When  the  preacher  led 
the  whole  congregation  joined  in,  learned  the  words, 
caught  the  tune  in  a  jiffy,  and  immediately  became 
participators  in  the  service  of  praise  or  supplication. 
The  value  of  such  gentle  craft  as  that,  well  under- 
stood as  it  used  to  be,  is  almost  forgotten  and  often 


1 66  Nation  Builders 

entirely  disregarded  now.  Wherever  you  can  get 
a  whole  congregation  heartly  singing  songs  that  are 
not  too  difficult,  and  not  too  inane,  you  may  be  sure 
that  they  are  in  a  frame  of  mind  to  make  the  most 
of  the  sermon. 

What  melodies  they  were,  those  songs  of  Zion, 
in  which  Wesley  had  crystallized  the  longing  and 
the  hope,  the  penitence  and  the  aspiration  of  the 
human  race!  Hardly  more  admirable,  perhaps, 
from  a  musical  standpoint,  than  the  later  produc- 
tions that  are  commonly  associated  with  Mr.  San- 
key's  name,  they  had  a  lilt  and  a  swing  to  them 
that  aroused  the  sluggish  nature  and  awakened  the 
spiritual  longing  of  many  a  rough  pioneer. 

With  what  unction  the  voice  in  the  wilderness 
was  lifted  up  in  words  whose  admonition  and  en- 
couragement were  understood  to  be  part  of  a  divine 
commission ! 

"Ye  servants  of  God,  your  Master  proclaim, 
And  publish  abroad  his  wonderful  name; 
The  name  all-victorious  of  Jesus  extol ; 
His  kingdom  is  glorious,  and  rules  over  all." 

What  an  urgent,  triumphant  major  strain !  Fear 
and  doubt  and  creeping  compromise  had  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  As  it  rang  out  under  green  leaf  canopies 
and  between  aisles  of  oak  and  pine  it  must  luuc  at- 
Iracted  all  that  was  highest  and  best  in  those  that 
heard  it  and  repelled  whatever  was  base  and  cow- 


The  Songs  of  Zion  167 

ardly.  There  was  a  no-compromise  quality  about 
Wesley's  songs  that  made  them  apt  auxiliaries  to 
men  who  preached  without  reservation  that  all  sin- 
ners must  be  damned  except  by  the  grace  of  God 
they  repent  and  believe  in  the  Lord  Christ. 

There  was  a  great  old  hymn,  a  favorite  in  the 
settlements,  that  we  can  hardly  see  the  beauty  of 
till  we  have  put  ourselves  in  the  circumstances  and 
amid  the  surroundings  of  those  who  lived  on  the 
ragged  edge  of  the  world: 

"Come  on,  my  partners  in  distress, 
My  comrades  through  the  wilderness." 

And  the  short-meter  hymn  called  "Peace"  seemed 
to  take  a  strong  hold  on  the  minds.of  people  whose 
suffering  and  distress  were  very 'frequent  and  very 
real : 

' '  Thou  very-present  Aid 

In  suffering  and  distress, 
The  mind  which  still  on  thee  is  stayed. 
Is  kept  in  perfect  peace." 

But  chief  among  all  the  songs  that  roused  the 
spirits  and  taxed  the  lungs  of  the  oldest  believer  and 
the  newest  convert,  that  one  which  satisfied  the  de- 
sire for  expression  of  hearts  overburdened  with  love 
and  longing,  that  was  sung  to  all  the  accompani- 
ments of  amens  and  tears  and  the  various  expres- 
sions of  rapture  that  an  honest  but  unsophisticated 
being  may  give  way  to,  was: 


1 68  Nation  Builders 

"O  for  a  thousand  tongues,  to  sing 

My  great  Redeemer's  praise; 

The  glories  of  my  God  and  King, 

The  triumphs  of  his  grace ! ' ' 

It  was  a  great  hymn  for  sacramental  seasons,  when 
those  who  spread  the  Lord's  table  in  the  wilderness 
looked  with  lively  faith  for  a  pentecostal  outpouring 
of  the  Spirit. 

Then  there  was  one  that  was  suited  to  sterner 
occasions,  that  had  a  dreadfully  Calvinistic  founda- 
tion to  it  despite  its  Methodist  re-creation.  Isaac 
Watts  wrote  the  core  of  it,  and  Charles  Wesley 
rewrote  or  varied  it.    It  is  this : 

"Before  Jehovah's  awful  throne, 
Ye  nations  bow  with  sacred  joy; 
Know  that  the  Lord  is  God  alone, 
He  can  create,  and  he  destroy." 

Well  do  we  remember  the  effect  of  the  music  to 
which  these  words  were  sung  as  we  heard  them  for 
the  first  time.  It  had  a  distinctly  martial  and  clan- 
gorous quality,  as  though  an  orchestra  of  brass 
should  have  accompanied  it. 

In  marked  antithesis  the  very  expression  of  happy 
surrender  was  the  hymn  commencing: 

"Jesus,  thou  art  my  righteousness, 
For  all  my  sins  were  thine; 
Thy  death  hath  bought  of  God  my  place, 
Thy  life  hath  made  him  mine." 

It  was  something  to  be  sung  at  the  close  of  the 


The  Songs  of  Zion  169 

day,  before  candle  lighting,  or  when  the  logs  were 
crackling  on  the  hearth — a  hymn  for  family  worship 
and  the  quiet  hour. 

The  final  and  lasting  advantage  of  the  itinerant's 
equipment  of  the  songs  of  Zion  was  that  when  the 
preacher  went  away  the  songs  did  not.  Every  one 
of  those  old  sacred  ditties  preached  its  sermons  over 
and  over  to  the  man  who  could  perhaps  get  the 
preacher's  words  out  of  his  mind,  but  could  not 
manage  to  forget  the  words  of  song  that  were  in- 
dissolubly  wrapped  up  with  the  tunes  that  he  and 
all  his  kin  and  neighbors  hummed  and  whistled 
as  they  went  about  their  work.  They  were  not  only 
pertinacious,  but  they  seemed  to  fit  every  occasion 
of  joy  or  sorrow.  Instead  of  coon  songs  and  rag- 
time inanities,  the  man  of  the  Kentucky  or  Ohio  or 
Indiana  frontier  had  for  his  popular  songs  the  songs 
of  Zion. 


CHAPTER  X 
From  Small  Beginnings 

For  many  years  those  who  were  ignorant  of  the 
real  activities  of  the  Methodist  Church,  as  well  as 
its  active  foes,  persistently  circulated  grave  mis- 
statements about  its  attitude  toward  education. 

As  all  men  know,  the  work  of  preaching  the  gos- 
pel was  of  necessity  often  committed  into  the  hands 
of  preachers  who  knew  more  about  the  plan  of  sal- 
vation than  they  did  about  the  construction  of  Eng- 
lish grammar.  The  story  of  the  exhorter  who  got 
hopelessly  involved  in  the  mazes  of  a  sentence  that 
refused  to  end  properly,  and  who  finally  gave  it  up 
and  shouted,  "My  brethren,  my  verb  and  nomina- 
tive have  failed  to  connect,  but  I'm  bound  for  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,"  may  be  apocryphal,  but  it  is 
not  beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility.  The  men  who 
won  the  wilderness  were  frequently  unlearned; 
their  value  to  the  world  lay  in  the  fact  that  they  were 
never  content  to  remain  so. 

The  wisest  thinkers  and  investigators  in  the 
world  have  a  habit  of  regarding  the  scholarship  of 
all  time  as  relative  ignorance,  the  standard  being  the 
unattaincd  heights  of  perfect  knowledge.     Those 


From  Small  Beginnings  171 

who  liave  just  sufficient  learning  to  make  them  vain 
and  censorious  are  less  enviable  than  the  unlearned 
man  who  strives  after  more  knowledge. 

The  term  "ignorant  fanatic"  was  frequently  ap- 
plied to  men  who  daily  risked  their  lives  to  impart 
their  little  store  of  knowledge  to  those  less  favored 
than  themselves,  and  who  at  the  same  time  were 
using  every  effort  to  increase  that  store. 

It  is  true  that  the  first  generation  of  Methodist 
preachers  were  not,  for  the  most  part,  men  of  in- 
tellectual culture.  They  were  prolDably  not  greatly 
superior  in  that  respect  to  the  immediate  circle  of 
our  Lord's  disciples.  Let  us  admit  without  argu- 
ment that  Dr.  Coke  and  Bishop  Asbury  could  not 
find  a  sufficient  number  of  men  possessing  a  high 
degree  of  education  to  carry  the  gospel  message, 
like  a  torch,  into  the  wilderness,  to  fire  the  con- 
sciences of  a  great  and  scattered  congregation. 
Frankly  accepting  the  statement  that  the  pioneers 
of  Methodism,  except  in  rare  instances,  had  seldom 
even  seen  the  inside  of  a  college,  we  ask.  What  of 
it?  Those  men,  had  they  been  furnished  with  ex- 
haustless  stores  of  Greek  and  Hebrew,  of  philoso- 
phy, science,  or  hcUcs-lettres,  would  have  found 
absolutely  no  use  for  such  wares  among  the  frontier 
cabins  of  a  primitive  people.  They  carried  a  full 
stock  of  convictions,  a  plentiful  supply  of  the  most 
refreshing  and  invigorating  moral  truths  that  ever 


i'/2  Nation  Builders 

revived  the  perishing  souls  of  men,  and  they  found 
for  this  merchandise  an  astonishing  market. 

It  appears  that  the  itinerant  preachers  met  the 
prevalHng  condition  of  ignorance  with  a  persistent 
effort  to  dispel  it,  and  they  fitly  commenced  this 
Herculean  labor  with  elementary  methods.  They 
carried  a  few  simple  books  or  tracts,  compiled  with 
a  direct  purpose  of  moral  instruction ;  simple  stories, 
not  above  the  comprehension  of  simple  readers,  but 
often  composed  with  a  degree  of  literary  skill  that 
has  not  been  generally  appreciated  by  literary  critics. 
Many  of  these  tracts  were  written  by  Wesley  or  his 
immediate  coadjutors,  who  did  a  great  work  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Methodist  movement  in  England 
by  means  of  such  popular  literature.  We  are  re- 
minded in  this  connection  of  the  popular  tales  of 
Maria  Edgeworth,  which  had  in  their  day  a  great 
vogue.  Born  in  Oxfordshire  in  1767,  Miss  Edge- 
worth  evidently  came  under  the  Wesleyan  influence, 
and  the  stories  wherewith  she  sought  to  "point  a 
moral  and  adorn  a  tale"  were  in  line  with  many 
less  famous  Methodist  tracts. 

In  the  same  category  may  be  classed  those  aston- 
ishing short  tales  that  broadened  and  perpetuated 
the  fame  of  Hannah  More.  Encouraged  by  the 
Rev.  John  Newton  and  others,  the  already  widely 
popular  authoress  commenced  a  series  of  short 
stories  that  were  particularly  designed  to  undersell 


From  Small  Beginnings  173 

and  supplant  the  ocean  of  cheap  trash,  largely  of 
French  inspiration,  with  which  the  English  market 
was  flooded.  The  prosecution  of  this  great  labor, 
which  was  commenced  about  the  year  1793,  almost 
exhausted  the  vitality  of  the  brave  and  gifted 
woman,  and  obliged  her  to  call  to  her  assistance 
several  of  her  friends.  The  first  series  of  tracts, 
known  as  the  Cheap  Repository  Tracts,  had  during 
the  first  year  the  enormous  sale  of  two  million  cop- 
ies, and  are  said  to  have  had  an  incalculable  influ- 
ence upon  the  poorer  classes  in  England  and  Amer- 
ica. Their  literary  merit  was  so  great  that  they 
overran  the  field  for  which  they  were  intended  and 
invaded  the  parlors  and  libraries  of  the  more  fas- 
tidious reading  public.  Such  masterpieces  as  the 
Shepherd  of  Salisbury  Plain  and  Parley  the  Porter, 
with  perhaps  half  a  score  others,  may  be  counted 
as  permanent  contributions  to  literature. 

If  the  question  is  asked,  What  have  Hannah 
More's  tracts  to  do  with  Methodism  more  than  with 
any  other  Christian  sect?  the  answer  is  that  the 
revival  of  evangelical  Christianity  in  England  at 
the  day  that  they  were  written  was  Methodist.  The 
Christian  renaissance  of  the  eighteenth  century 
commenced  at  Oxford  in  the  Pious  Club,  and  John 
Wesley  was  its  apostle.  On  this  point  Miss  More 
herself  gives  certain  testimony  in  a  letter  written 
to  the  Rev.  John  Newton  in  1794:  "My  great  and 


1/4  Nation  Builders 

worldly  friends  are  terribly  afraid  I  shall  be  too 
iVlethodistical — a  term  now  applied  to  all  vital  Chris- 
ti(niily—mu\  watch  me  so  closely  that  it  will  require 
more  prudence  than  some  of  my  religious  friends 
would  think  It  right  to  employ." 

It  has  been  claimed,  and  I  believe  without  refu- 
tation, that  the  series  of  tracts  that  bear  Hannah 
More's  name  were  an  important  factor  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Religious  Tract  Society,  formed 
in  London  in  1799.  The  parent  tract  society  of  all 
was  formed  by  John  AVesley  and  Thomas  Coke  in 
1782,  and  its  publications  were  largely  dependent 
upon  the  personal  labors  of  Wesley,  \\ho  wrote 
many  books  and  abridged  and  edited  others  for  the 
moral  culture  of  the  people. 

No  greater  fallacy  has  ever  been  circulated  than 
that  which  has  undervalued  the  moral  tract  of  a 
century  ago.  The  names  of  Edgeworth,  More, 
and  Wesley  might  l)e  supplemented  by  many  others 
of  commanding  rank  in  the  world  of  letters,  and 
the  result  of  their  most  earnest  work  should  afford  a 
subject  for  serious  investigation  to  the  student  of 
literary  history. 

The  inception  of  Methodism  was  one  of  instruc- 
tion. Whitefield,  whose  magnificent  campaign  for 
Christ  resulted  in  the  establishment  in  America  of 
more  institutions  (vf  learning  than  have  ever  been 
credited  to  the  initiative  of  any  other  one  man,  was 


From  Small  Beginnings  175 

a  Methodist  in  every  essential,  drawing  his  inspira- 
tion in  company  with  Wesley  from  the  same  font, 
and  keeping  his  Calvinism  rigidly  in  the  background 
in  all  his  American  work.  The  establishment  of  a 
number  of  free  schools  for  the  poor  in  England  was 
directly  due  to  Wesley,  and  his  influence  upon  the 
public  school  system  of  America  is  immeasurable. 

We  are  wont  to  reverence  Robert  Raikes  as  the 
father  of  Sunday  schools  in  the  world,  but  the  Rev. 
Warren  A.  Chandler  in  his  recent  book  on  Great 
Revivals  and  the  Great  Republic  has  pointed  out 
that  "the  Sunday  school  movement,  inaugurated  by 
Robert  Raikes,  w^as  suggested  to  him  by  a  Methodist 
woman,  Sophia  Cook,  who  marched  with  him  at 
the  head  of  his  troop  of  ragged  children  the  first 
Sunday  they  were  taken  to  the  parish  church.  An- 
other Methodist  woman,  Hannah  Ball,  really  had  at 
High  Wycombe  a  Sunday  school  fourteen  years  in 
advance  of  Raikes's  first  school  in  Gloucester,  and 
Wesley,  in  his  parish  of  Christ  Church,  Savannah, 
Georgia,  had  a  Sunday  school  fifty  years  before  the 
w^ork  of  Raikes  began.  Francis  Asbury  organized 
a  Sunday  school  in  Hanover  County,  Virginia,  in 
1786." 

We  cannot  estimate  the  value  of  such  a  distribu- 
tion of  tracts  as  that  which  we  have  been  consid- 
ering unless  we  can  imagine  a  community  almost 
destitute  of  books  or  newspapers,  to  whom  every 


1/6  Nation  Builders 

scrap  of  printed  matter  was  a  precious  boon,  to  be 
read  and  reread,  loaned  and  treasured  as  long  as 
it  held  together.  Not  infrequently  an  American 
frontier  cabin  was  without  a  scrap  of  a  printed  page 
of  any  sort;  sometimes  an  almanac,  brown  with 
smoke,  dust-bespecked  and  thumb-marked,  hung  for 
years  in  a  chimney  corner,  the  sole  literary  treasure 
of  a  family. 

At  a  day  that  already  belongs  to  the  historic  past 
of  the  nation  the  boy  Lincoln  found  a  neighbor 
with  a  little  store  of  books  that  was  a  greater  affair 
for  that  time  and  place  than  the  Astor  Library  was 
in  New  York.  His  biographers  tell  how  he  bor- 
rowed the  volumes  and  mastered  them,  reveling  in 
the  prospect  they  opened  to  him  of  a  life  beyond 
his  familiar  horizon  of  timber  and  farm  land,  of 
rail-splitting  and  flat-boating.  Lincoln's  experience 
with  the  books  was  an  unusual  one.  The  great 
majority  of  American  frontier  families  never  owned 
a  book  and  rarely  saw  one  till  the  Methodist 
preachers  brought  them. 

The  traveling  preachers  were  distributers  of  a 
wholesome  literature  of  a  type  admirably  suited  to 
the  mental  capacity  of  those  who  received  it  and 
tending  to  perpetuate  the  impression  made  upon  the 
minds  and  consciences  of  men  by  the  spoken  word. 
With  the  tracts  were  often  carried  hymn  books, 
which  were  in  great  demand. 


From  Small  Beginnings  177 

These  distributions  of  reading  matter  were  not 
free,  except  in  cases  where  the  people  were  abso- 
lutely destitute  of  the  means  to  purchase.  Probably 
they  were  not  often  paid  for  in  money,  which  was  a 
commodity  almost  as  rare  as  literature ;  but  lodging, 
horse  gear,  provisions,  or  some  other  equivalent  was 
readily  accepted  in  exchange.  The  store  of  hooks 
with  which  a  "saddlebag  preacher"  set  out  was 
always  contributory  to  his  support  and  sometimes 
his  only  available  asset. 

There  is  no  fairness  in  making  a  comparison  be- 
tween the  newly  commissioned  member  of  Asbury's 
field  force  and  a  college-bred  New  England  divine, 
so  far  as  relative  advancement  in  book  knowledge  is 
concerned.  Rather  measure  each  man  in  the  field 
where  he  worked,  and  by  the  value,  the  breadth, 
and  the  permanent  results  of  the  work  performed. 

Not  only  did  the  field  force  of  the  Methodist 
Church  act  as  distributers  of  the  sort  of  literature 
best  adapted  to  the  comprehension  and  the  needs  of 
the  scattered  inland  population  of  the  new  country ; 
but  at  the  same  time  the  whole  church,  through  its 
governing  bodies,  was  using  every  means  to  increase 
the  efficiency  of  its  preachers  and  enlarge  the  capac- 
ity of  its  membership  by  establishing  schools  and 
publication  offices. 

As  previously  stated,  Dr.  Coke's  work,  com- 
menced at  the  very  outset  of  Methodist  labor  in 


178  Nation  Builders 

America,  was  largely  educational.  Such  facilities 
as  the  Methodist  Church  could  control  were  offered 
to  those  who  were  persuaded  that  they  had  a  call 
to  preach,  and  with  each  generation  these  facilities 
increased,  till  at  length  the  denomination  that  was 
poorest  in  material  w^ealth  and  richest  in  the  yearly 
interest  of  conversions  to  Christ  became  the  most 
important  and  powerful  of  Christian  sects  in  Amer- 
ica, and  depends  to-day  for  the  bulk  of  its  work 
upon  an  educated  ministry. 

This  high  ground,  to  be  sure,  was  not  reached 
at  a  step.  There  were  many  years — intermediate 
years  between  the  generation  of  the  founders  of 
Methodism  and  our  modern  era — when  the  feelings 
and  prejudices  of  a  very  large  proportion  of  Meth- 
odist laymen  and  not  a  few  of  its  leaders  were  en- 
gaged in  opposition  to  a  ministry  specially  edu- 
cated for  their  work.  The  theory  that  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Spirit  of  God  would  be  in  all  cases  su- 
perior to  a  formal  course  of  theological  study  was 
based  upon  certain  Scripture  texts  and  perhaps  was 
fostered  by  the  very  genius  of  the  Methodist  Church. 
At  the  outset  its  teachings  were  not  doctrinal;  its 
appeals  were  always  experiential.  It  was  rather 
an  evangelical  society  than  a  church  built  upon  a 
theological  foundation.  The  experience  came  first, 
and  around  this  kernel  grew  the  necessary  shell  of 
protective  theology.     It  was  hard  for  an  old-line 


From  Small  Beginnings  179 

Methodist  to  understand  why  any  man  who  could 
read  the  Bible  and  hope  for  the  inspiration  of  the 
Spirit  to  interpret  it  should  require  educational 
preparation  for  his  work.  The  ministry  were  natu- 
rally the  first  to  appreciate  the  need  for  such 
training. 

In  1833  Dickinson  College,  at  Carlisle,  Pennsyl- 
vania, passed  into  Methodist  control,  though  orig- 
inally Presbyterian.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the 
revivifying  of  this  almost  dead  institution  by  the 
infusion  of  Methodist  blood  occurred  during  the 
very  period  when  the  reaction  noticed  in  this  chap- 
ter was  at  its  height.  It  was  a  protest,  by  the  best 
and  most  progressive  spirits  in  the  Methodist 
Church,  against  that  reaction. 

Associated  with  the  history  of  Dickinson  are  the 
imperishable  names  of  McClintock  and  Crooks  and 
many  others  who  have  honored  the  profession  to 
which  they  gave  their  lives.  It  is  especially  gratify- 
ing to  the  surviving  author  of  this  book  to  pay  here 
a  tribute  of  loving  remembrance  and  reverent  admi- 
ration to  the  memory  of  George  Richard  Crooks, 
whose  maturity  may  be  said  to  have  begun  at  Dick- 
inson College,  where  he  graduated  in  1840,  and 
whose  life  of  broad  usefulness  was  withdrawn  from 
the  sight  of  men  at  Drew  half  a  century  later. 

It  is  not  possible  in  a  limited  space  to  add  to  or 
improve  upon  Dn  William  F,  Anderson's  admirable 


i8o  Nation  Builders 

monograph  upon  Dr.  Crooks.  It  is  a  pamphlet  that 
should  be  read  by  everyone  who  would  comprehend 
an  important  phase  of  Methodist  history.  One 
quotation  may  be  permitted  here: 

'The  Philadelphia  Conference  never  did  itself 
greater  honor  nor  served  the  church  more  truly 
than  when  it  sent  Dr.  Crooks  as  one  of  its  delegates 
to  the  General  Conference  in  1856.  He  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Committee  on  Education,  and  through  his 
instrumentality  an  action  was  secured  that  was  most 
vital  to  the  interest  of  the  church.  .  .  .  The  friends 
of  the  higher  ministerial  qualifications  were  rallied ; 
public  meetings  were  held;  able  advocates  of  the 
movement  were  enlisted.  Dr.  Crooks  was  its  ardent 
and  successful  leader.  With  the  cooperation  of  Dr. 
Edward  Thomson,  Dr.  John  Dempster,  and  others 
he  secured  the  adoption  of  a  resolution  sanc- 
tioning the  establishment  of  theological  semina- 
ries in  our  church.  Thus  the  sentiment  was  turned 
which  with  the  advance  of  the  years  has  crystallized 
in  a  well-nigh  universal  demand  for  an  educated 
ministry.  ...  In  1866,  as  a  member  of  the  special 
Centennial  Committee  on  Education,  he  originated 
a  plan  to  establish  a  permanent  fund  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  youth  of  Methodism,  which  fund  should 
receive  the  offerings  of  the  children  of  the  church 
and  be  repeated  in  all  coming  years.  His  associates 
on  the  committee  were  John  McClintock,  Daniel 


From  Small  Beginnings  i8i 

Curry,  Oliver  Hoyt,  James  Bishop,  and  C.  C.  North. 
The  outcome  was  Children's  Day." 

Drew  Theological  Seminary  did  not  come  into 
existence  till  1866,  and  from  the  outset  its  aim  was 
to  afford  the  broadest  intellectual  culture  as  well  as 
a  thorough  training  for  the  work  of  the  ministry. 
It  belongs  to  the  immediate  past  and  present,  and 
has  only  an  incidental  connection  with  the  subjects 
of  this  work. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  Methodism  has  done 
much  for  the  cause  of  education  in  the  United 
States.  Let  the  old  stigma,  implied  in  faint  praise 
when  not  more  viciously  or  ignorantly  affirmed,  be 
forever  removed.  The  Methodist  Church  has  done 
her  full  share  in  establishing  and  supporting  edu- 
cational institutions,  has  built  and  conducted  schools 
and  colleges,  besides  upholding  with  all  her  giant 
strength  the  public  school  system  of  America.  Her 
full  share  has  been  a  mighty  proportion  of  the  work 
accomplished  in  this  continent,  a  proportion  far 
greater  than  that  of  any  other  one  denomination, 
because  she  is  the  strongest  of  all  denominations 
in  America  to-day. 

Eighteen  per  cent  of  all  the  colleges  and  univer- 
sities reporting  to  the  United  States  Comm.issioner 
of  Education  are  under  Methodist  control,  and 
twelve  per  cent  of  all  the  denominational  schools  in 
the  country  are  Methodist  establishments,  though 


1 82  Nation  Builders 

the  support  of  the  church  has  ahvays  been  given 
by  preference  to  pubhc  rather  than  to  parochial 
schools. 

From  Cokesbury  College,  in  Maryland,  instituted 
in  1785,  the  corner  stone  being  laid  by  Bishop  As- 
bury,  to  Drew,  the  lines  both  of  effort  and  accom- 
plishment steadily  widened.  In  the  West  for  many 
years  the  only  educational  influence  was  that  fostered 
by  the  Methodist  Church.  McKendree  College,  in 
Illinois,  was  the  first  college  in  the  rich  country 
that  is  now  the  teeming  middle  land  of  the  republic. 

Taking  the  possible  adult  population  of  the 
United  States  as  sixty  millions — though  that  figure 
is  probably  somewhat  in  excess  of  the  reality — we 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  astounding  reflec- 
tion that  more  than  one  tenth  of  that  number  are 
actually  Methodist  communicants.  No  comment 
can  add  to  the  impressiveness  of  that  fact. 

Following  the  great  Methodist  Book  Concern  in 
New  York,  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  and  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee, have  each  a  similar  publishing  house.  From 
these  fountains  have  gone  out  a  broad  and  ever- 
increasing  stream  of  wholesome  literature,  and  no 
estimate  of  their  influence  is  ai)t  to  be  commensurate 
with  the  fact. 

In  a  history  of  the  Methodist  Church  in  America 
(he  Methodist  Book  Concern  would  naturally  fill 
an  important  chapter,  and  even  in  the  discussion  of 


From  Small  Beginnings  183 

the  influence  of  the  early  Methodist  preachers  upon 
the  genius  and  growth  of  the  repubUc  we  must  give 
more  than  a  passing  glance  to  an  agency  so  indis- 
solubly  connected  with  the  very  life  of  the  Meth- 
odist Church.  The  Book  Concern  was  the  first  ex- 
pression of  a  conviction  that  the  permanence  of  the 
work  of  the  pioneers  of  Methodism  must  depend 
largely  upon  the  distribution  of  wholesome  litera- 
ture. This  earliest  auxiliary  agency  of  the  church 
came  into  existence  at  the  famous  Christmas  Con- 
ference in  1784.  In  pursuance  of  a  plan  to  estab- 
lish a  publishing  house,  to  serve  as  an  adjunct  to 
the  church,  the  Rev.  John  Dickins  was  appointed 
in  1789  to  act  as  book  steward,  and  with  six  hun- 
dred dollars  of  borrowed  capital  he  commenced 
operations  at  No.  50  North  Second  Street,  near 
Arch  Street,  in  Philadelphia. 

In  a  list  of  the  books  published  by  John  Dickins 
were  several  biographies,  the  first  volume  of  Francis 
Asbury's  Journal,  several  of  John  Fletcher's  works, 
several  sets  of  sermons,  as  many  more  volumes  of 
serious  books  for  the  young,  the  experiences  and 
travels  of  Mr.  Freeborn  Garrettson,  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  and  Baxter's  Saints'  Rest.  Some  of  these 
books  are  classical;  one  or  two  may  still  be  found 
upon  booksellers'  shelves,  and  all  were  of  a  lofty  and 
elevating  tone.  For  general  literary  character  it  is 
probable  that  John  Dickins's  book  list  would  bear 


184  Nation"  Builders 

comparison  with  most  modern  publishers'  cata- 
logues. 

From  such  a  small  beginning  the  Methodist  Book 
Concern,  the  largest  and  probably  the  oldest  active 
publishing  house  in  America,  has  sprung.  Dickins's 
advertisement  contained  this  clause :  "As  the  profits 
of  these  books  are  for  the  general  benefit  of  the 
Methodist  societies,  it  is  humbly  recommended  that 
they  will  purchase  no  books  which  we  publish  of 
any  other  person  than  the  aforesaid  John  Dickins, 
or  the  Methodist  ministers  and  preachers  in  the  sev- 
eral circuits,  or  such  persons  as  sell  them  by  their 
consent." 

The  acorn  planted  by  John  Dickins  has  grown 
into  a  mighty  oak,  but  the  character  of  the  mature 
plant  is  the  same  that  was  shown  in  the  embryo. 
The  few  dollars  eked  out  of  the  profits  of  the  Phil- 
adelphia house  have  grown  to  more  than  a  hundred 
thousand  annually,  and  the  little  book  list  has 
stretched  into  the  thousands.  Hundreds  of  worn- 
out  Methodist  preachers  are  passing  the  evening 
of  consecrated  lives  in  serenity  and  safety  because 
of  the  magnificent  success  of  their  great  publishing 
house.  The  contribution  of  the  Book  Concern  for 
the  support  of  superannuated  ministers  carries  with 
it  no  taint  or  suspicion  of  charity.  It  is  part  of  the 
great  institution  to  which  every  Methodist  preacher 
gives  his  life  without  question  and  without  reserve, 


From  Small  Beginnings  185 

and  its  assistance  is  his  right  when  his  hands  are 
feeble  and  the  twiHght  of  his  Hfe  is  drawing  near. 

The  number  of  tracts,  pamphlets,  leaflets,  and 
periodicals  of  all  sorts  that  have  been  issued  by  the 
Book  Concern  in  its  career  of  more  than  a  century 
is  almost  beyond  computation.  The  value  of  the 
distribution  of  this  vast  material,  in  the  formation 
of  character  and  the  reclaiming  of  men  from  care- 
lessness and  immorality  to  higher  standards  of 
thought  and  action,  can  never  be  expressed  in  finite 
terms. 


CHAPTER  XI 
The  Methodist  Church  and  the  Union 

The  close  bond  that  has  always  existed  between 
the  Methodist  Church  in  America  and  the  Federal 
Union  was  not  only  illustrated,  however  uncon- 
sciously, by  the  ministers  and  laymen  of  that  church 
during  the  formative  period  of  our  national  life, 
but  at  a  later  day  was  exemplified  by  millions  of 
Methodists  when  the  Union  was  threatened  with 
disruption. 

Greatest  of  all  the  momentous  questions  that  have 
moved  both  church  and  state  to  their  foundations, 
the  political  differences  that  in  1861  finally  led  to 
civil  war  roused  to  enthusiasm  the  minds  of  a  great 
host  of  citizens  whose  consciences  were  already 
trained  to  obedience  to  the  demands  of  duty.  No- 
where in  the  world  could  be  found  so  large  a 
body  of  men  similarly  trained  as  in  the  Methodist 
Church,  and  it  is  with  no  surprise  that  we  discover 
that  no  body  of  men,  in  the  North  or  in  the  South, 
contributed  so  largely  to  the  strength  of  their  re- 
spective armies  as  did  the  Methodists. 

The  casting  vote  for  or  against  the  Union  lay  at 
that  time  in  several  of  the  border  states  with  the 


Methodist  Church  and  the  Union    187 

Methodist  societies.  Had  the  membership  of  this 
church  decided  against  the  Union,  they  were  numer- 
ically strong  enough  to  have  swung  their  states  in 
Hne  with  the  secession.  That  they  did  not  do  so 
was  due  in  great  part,  we  beHeve.  to  the  efforts  of 
certain  leaders  whose  words  and  works  embody 
both  the  enthusiasm  and  the  conservatism  of 
patriotism. 

We  have  already  spoken  in  another  chapter  of 
Dr.  George  Richard  Crooks.  As  editor  of  the 
Methodist  he  supported  the  Union  cause  with  such 
effect  that,  to  quote  again  from  Dr.  William  F. 
Anderson,  "the  church  owes  him  a  large  debt  of 
gratitude  for  the  influence  he  exerted  upon  the 
Methodists  of  the  border  states.  He  really  saved 
that  portion  of  the  country  to  the  church  and  to  the 
Union." 

With  the  unfortunate  split  between  the  Methodist 
Church  South  and  North  we  have  nothing  to  do. 
Happily  many  old  differences,  born  of  sectional 
prejudice,  have  long  since  healed,  and  the  matters 
that  a  generation  ago  wxre  of  preeminent  impor- 
tance to  the  citizen  have  now  only  a  historic  in- 
terest. This  we  know%  that  the  whole  body  .of 
Methodists,  in  all  the  land,  threw  their  whole 
strength  heartily  into  whichever  cause  they  es- 
poused, for  conscience'  sake. 

The  weight  of  Methodist  influence  has  generally 


i88  Nation  Builders 

been  exerted  in  opposition  to  slavery.  From  a  very 
early  time  this  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  church 
has  been  apparent. 

"In  1784,"  says  McMaster,  "the  cause  of  the 
negro  for  a  time  was  popular.  The  Methodists 
took  it  up  and  bade  every  member  of  the  society, 
where  the  law  would  permit,  emancipate  his  slaves 
wdthin  a  twelvemonth.  Before  a  decade  had  gone 
by  abolition  societies  had  sprung  up  in  Rhode  Is- 
land, in  Connecticut,  in  New  Jersey,  at  New  York, 
in  Baltimore,  in  Virginia,  at  Washington,  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  even  on  Maryland's  Eastern  Shore." 

"The  Methodists  took  it  up."  Can  any  statement 
be  made  which  will  more  forcibly  indicate  the 
strength  of  Methodist  influence  even  at  that  early 
day? 

John  Wesley  w^as  a  firm  and  consistent  opponent 
of  slavery,  in  marked  contrast  to  the  theory  and 
practice  of  Whitefield.  With  the  views  of  Wesley 
the  great  Methodist  leaders  of  America,  with  Dr. 
Coke  at  their  head,  heartily  agreed.  It  is  worthy 
of  note  that  Dr.  Coke  and  Bishop  Asbury,  charged 
with  the  presentation  of  a  petition  to  Congress  for 
the  emancipation  of  all  the  slaves  in  America,  went 
to  George  W^ishlngton,  then  at  Mount  Vernon,  with 
the  hope  of  obtaining  his  signature.  Washington 
did  not  find  it  expedient  to  accede  to  the  request  of 
his  reverend  visitors,  because  he  believed  that  such 


Methodist  Church  and  the  Union    189 

an  exertion  of  his  influence  upon  legislation  was 
not  compatible  with  his  official  position,  but  he  ex- 
pressed his  sympathy  with  their  object,  and  told 
them  that  if  Congress  would  take  their  petition  into 
consideration  he  would  then  write  a  letter  which 
would  strengthen  their  hands.  That  the  great  ob- 
ject was  not  accomplished  the  country  knows  to  its 
sorrow;  but  it  is  worth  while  to  recollect  that  the 
first  emancipation  agitation  began  almost  as  soon  as 
the  government  did,  that  it  commenced  in  the  South, 
and  that  the  earliest  agitators  were  the  Methodist 
leaders. 

Marked  was  the  contrast  between  Wesley  and  his 
followers  in  their  ideal  of  human  liberty  and  that 
of  Whitefield,  who  argued  for  slavery  in  Georgia 
at  a  time  when  that  pestilential  institution  was 
prohibited  by  the  charter  of  the  colony.  Georgia 
was  not  originally  a  slave  state,  nor  did  its 
founders  contemplate  any  such  imposition  upon  its 
vitality. 

The  contrast  between  Whitefield  and  Wesley,  it 
may  here  be  said,  was  the  difference  between  a 
rocket  and  an  arc  light.  Whitefield  was  a  Calvinist 
whose  Calvinism  did  not  appear  in  his  pyrotechnic 
progress  through  the  American  colonies.  A  very 
youthful,  very  earnest,  and  phenomenally  eloquent 
preacher,  he  set  the  continent  afire,  and  is  univer- 
sally credited  as  the  source  of  a  mighty  revival  of 


190  Nation  Builders 

religion  which  permeated  all  churches  and  led  to  the 
establishment  of  educational  and  other  beneficent 
institutions.  The  result  of  Whitefield's  work  was 
far  greater  and  stronger  than  his  personality  seemed 
to  promise.  He  did  not  leave  any  new  social  on 
religious  order  as  a  monument  to  his  genius  or  his 
faith.  He  was,  essentially,  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness,  and  the  voice,  but  for  its  immediate  influ- 
ence, might  have  been  absolutely  impersonal.  The 
attitude  of  Whitefield  toward  slavery  is  a  blight 
upon  his  reputation. 

The  persistence  of  Wesley's  character,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  shown  in  the  great  society  that  bears  his 
name  and  in  the  force  and  extension  of  his  princi- 
ples even  down  to  the  present  day. 

Dr.  Coke  preached  emancipation  till  the  neigh- 
boring population  was  up  in  arms.  He  was  perse- 
cuted, forbidden  to  preach,  c\'en  put  in  danger  of 
assassination.  Men  who  listened  with  indignation 
to  his  vehement  demands  that  they  should  free  then- 
slaves  met  to  waylay  him,  to  put  a  summary  end  to 
such  pernicious  doctrines.  Like  all  brave  men,  the 
])ioneer  abolitionist  was  never  bolder  or  more  de- 
cided than  when  he  met  with  opposition.  To  know 
that  an  enemy  was  following  him  through  the  woods 
with  a  gun  only  drove  him  to  more  vehement  and 
eloquent  outbursts  against  slavcholding.  Incident- 
ally, it  is  a  pleasure  to  note  that  one  particularly 


Methodist  Church  and  the  Union    191 

violent  foe  was  afterward  converted  and  became  a 
good  Methodist. 

A  woman  slave  owner  offered  fifty  pounds  to  any- 
one who  would  catch  the  Methodist  leader  and  give 
him  a  hundred  lashes.  Again  he  was  indicted  by 
the  grand  jury  and  chased  by  several  score  men, 
who  would  have  made  short  work  of  him  if  they  had 
found  him. 

The  personality  of  Dr.  Coke  was  displayed  in 
many  ways,  in  his  long  and  arduous  labors  in  Ire- 
land and  in  his  impulsive  offer  to  resign  from  the 
Methodist  connection  and  accept  the  post  of  mission- 
ary bishop  for  Ceylon  in  the  established  church,  if  by 
so  doing  he  could  carry  the  gospel  into  India;  but 
in  none  of  the  acts  of  his  eventful  life  were  his  hu- 
manity and  his  heroism  more  characteristically  dis- 
played than  in  his  efforts  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  America. 

The  strength  of  the  Methodist  Church  at  various 
times  has  been  vigorously  directed  against  the  "pe- 
culiar institution,"  and  at  the  outbreak  of  the  civil 
war  the  majority  of  its  communicants  were  opposed 
to  its  continuance. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  influence  of  the 
Methodist  connection  has  always  been  among  the 
foremost  factors  that  have  worked  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  those  ideals  and  those  standards  that  we 
call  American.    In  all  great  movements  the  attitude 


192  Nation  Builders 

of  a  great,  conservative,  conscientious  body  such  as 
this  is  of  vital  importance  to  the  nation  and  to 
mankind. 

Another  view  of  the  value  of  Methodism  to  the 
English-speaking  nations  has  been  presented  by  W. 
T.  Stead,  who,  in  regarding  American  Methodism 
from  an  Englishman's  standpoint,  sees  in  it  the 
promise  of  more  perfect  and  continuous  unity  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  the  United  States.  He 
says : 

"From  the  standpoint  of  those  who,  like  our- 
selves, regard  the  unity  of  the  English-speaking 
people  as  one  of  the  supreme  ends  of  modern  pol- 
itics, it  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
John  W^'esley  and  his  work.  In  the  most  energetic 
denomination  in  the  United  States  he  created  a  new 
tic  between  the  empire  and  the  republic.  Millions 
upon  millions  of  Americans  regard  Epworth  and 
L^etter  Lane,  the  Foundry  and  City  Road,  as  the 
Mecca  and  Medina  of  their  faith.  Carlyle  said  that 
Shakespeare,  by  his  genius,  had  unified  the  English- 
speaking  world,  ^^'c  are  all  united,  he  said,  in 
allegiance  to  King  Shakespeare.  But  that  which 
Shakespeare  could  not  do,  in  that  millions  never 
read  or  sec  his  plays,  John  Wesley  has  done  with 
much  effect.  Among  the  influences  which  create 
a  sense  of  unity  among  onr  English  folk,  that  of 
John  Wesley  stands  veiy  nearly  in  the  first  rank. 


Methodist  Church  and  the  Union     193 

Neither  Knox  nor  Cromwell  affects  the  lives  of  so 
many  men  and  women  who  are  toiling  and  working 
all  around  us  to-day  as  does  John  Wesley.  There 
are  nigh  upon  thirty  millions  of  English-speaking 
men  who  view  the  next  life  through  Wesley's  spec- 
tacles and  whose  round  of  daily  duty  is  directly 
affected  by  the  rules  and  regulations  of  the  great 
Methodist  saint— the  Ignatius  Loyola  of  the  English 
church." 

This  utterance,  though  somewhat  apart  from  the 
main  argument  of  this  book,  is  yet  in  line  with  it. 
It  points  to  an  influence  so  great  as  to  take  rank 
with  the  most  stupendous  movements  of  history,  an 
influence  transcending  that  of  John  Knox  and  com- 
mensurate with  that  of  Luther  and  Paul.  These 
are  bold  claims,  but  they  need  no  defense,  since  the 
])roof  of  them  is  spread  wide  upon  the  pages  of  his- 
tory, and  he  who  runs  may  read. 


CHAPTER  XII 
The  After-Word 

In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  tried  to  note  the 
proem  of  American  Methodism.  The  materials  for 
it  have  frequently  been  hidden  away  in  outAVorn  and 
neglected  biographies  or  merely  notched  in  the  cal- 
endars of  the  Conferences,  but  the  traditions  and 
legends  linger  yet  along  the  valleys  of  the  Ohio, 
among  the  Cumberland  hills,  beside  the  banks  of  the 
Wabash  and  the  Tennessee,  like  the  fragments  of 
a  great  epic,  and  the  chronicler  who  catches  the 
dying  echoes  is  thrilled  by  the  militant  sound  of 
the  American  crusade. 

The  saddlebag  men  of  the  wilderness  were  not 
pastors  to  lead  their  flocks  beside  still  waters.  They 
were  heroes  and  witnesses.  Without  the  learning 
that  we  commonly  associate  with  the  clerical  pro- 
fession, without  any  academic  bias  or  scholastic 
bent,  they  were  nevertheless  filled  with  understand- 
ing and  fired  by  an  enthusiasm  that  fused  and 
illumined. 

We  know  that  in  singleness  of  purpose  they  strove 
for  the  advancement  of  that  faith  which  (hey  be- 
lieved to  be  the  one  essential  to  true  living.    If  wc 


The  After-Word  195 

study  their  records  with  minds  open  to  the  signifi- 
cance of  historic  truth  we  know  what  they  never 
comprehended,  that  they  were  working  no  less  truly 
and  no  less  effectively  in  the  providence  of  the  Cre- 
ator for  the  establishment  of  the  Union  which  has 
grown  to  be  the  synonym  for  all  that  is  best  in  the 
social  and  political  fabric  of  their  country. 

The  life  of  the  Methodist  Church  as  a  power  in  the 
world  has  not  depended  primarily  upon  its  splendid 
organization  nor  upon  the  ability  and  faithfulness 
of  its  great  leaders,  but  upon  its  vital,  unswerv- 
ing faith  in  a  divine  power  working  for  the  salva- 
tion of  man.  Without  this  sublime  confidence  in 
the  miraculous  initiative  the  lives  of  the  Methodist 
itinerants  would  have  been  impossible.  It  seems 
as  though  he  who  runs  must  read  in  their  uncon- 
scious achievement  no  less  than  in  their  conscious 
labor  the  guidance  of  Omnipotent  Power. 

We  are  giving  the  record  of  the  toilers  of  the  fron- 
tier Methodist  Church — the  simple,  single-hearted 
zealous  body  of  primitive  Christians  who  struggled 
and  wept,  suffered  and  sang  on  their  journey  to  the 
celestial  city — as  a  suggestion  for  study  in  a  field 
of  American  history  that  has  been  little  regarded. 
To  Theodore  Roosevelt  alone  among  authors  of 
gen.eral  works  relating  to  American  history  we  may 
give  the  credit  for  recognition  of  the  work  of  the 
Methodist  itinerants  as  pioneers  of  the  republic. 


196  Nation  Builders 

The  record  is  one  of  a  generation  that  has  passed 
away.  We  call  the  roll  of  great  men,  great  in  hu- 
manity, courage,  zeal,  eloquence,  and  faith.  What 
unfaltering  voices  answer  from  the  depths  of  the 
forest  where  they  laid  down  their  lives !  From  cane- 
brake  and  mountain  and  morass  they  answer:  As- 
bury.  Coke,  Burke,  Bascom,  Lee,  Bangs,  Bigelow, 
Cartwright,  Taylor — by  tens,  by  hundreds,  by  thou- 
sands they  gather,  a  great  multitude  of  heroes,  who 
manfully  played  their  part  and  sacrificed  their  lives 
for  the  sake  of  the  faith  that  was  in  them. 

They  laid  broad  the  foundations  of  the  social 
order  in  regions  where  without  them  all  would  have 
been  anarchy.  They  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder 
through  long  years  of  privation,  danger,  fatigue, 
and  suffering,  never  falling  back,  never  refusing  the 
odds  of  battle,  fighting  manfully,  like  good  soldiers 
of  the  cross.  The  roughness,  the  minor  faults,  the 
eccentricities  that  marked  them  kin  to  the  humanity 
around  them,  have  been  rounded  off  and  smoothed 
away  by  the  hand  of  time,  and  their  virtues  stand 
out  resplendent.  As  Americans,  whatever  creed  we 
profess,  we  must  honor  among  our  greatest  and  our 
best  those  grand  Americans  of  the  earlier  day — the 
pioneer  preachers  of  Methodism. 


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